Merlin: "The Curse of Cornelius Sigan"; or, "Dry Your Eyes, Mate, Plenty More Fish in the Sea"

If Sex and the City has contributed anything to society (and I dare say there is a strong argument to the contrary), it is the distillation of a difficult but necessary duty which has fallen to friends down the centuries, without any change from the earliest times right up to today. It packaged the conversation friends have dug deep and addressed to friends since the mists of time first began to melt away into six simply understood words. “He’s just not that into you”. It is every person’s obligation to observe the string of events which will lead to this conclusion, it is their obligation to think what their friend will find unthinkable, and finally, it is their obligation to gently but firmly share their findings. I have been at both the receiving and the dispensing end of that advice, and while neither has been particularly easy or pleasant, both were absolutely, fundamentally, beyond any shadow of doubt, for the best for all concerned. But watching Merlin on Saturday, it struck me that he, having spent most of the first series in dire need of the “He’s just not that into you” conversation with someone – anyone – has stepped well beyond that stage.

I love Merlin. It is one of the few series I genuinely looked forward to the return of, and independent witnesses could confirm I actually squealed a little with excitement when I saw the trailer advertising the second series. But it is sad to say that things are a-changing in Camelot, and not necessarily in a good way. The first series rocketed through cheerily enough, but it ended on something of a sally which foreshadowed future misery. Merlin voluntarily gave up his life for Arthur. The deal wasn’t sealed in the end – obviously – but the thought was there, and that thought, once had, were always bond to inform their relationship later, despite, or maybe because, only Merlin knowing about it. And never more was this new dynamic more obvious than Saturday’s little romp whereby Cedric, a small-time thief, sometime massively scary sorcerer, deposed Merlin of his role as Arthur’s closest advisor without passing Go. He made it look easy. Indeed, it was easy, mainly because Arthur was not in the least bit bothered by whether Merlin was around or not, despite Merlin fighting off gargoyles etc etc, exhorted on his way to possible death by Gaius shrieking “do it for Arthur!” In the name of God, why?

There was a point during the first episode of the second series of Merlin when I finally clocked what the Merlin/Arthur relationship had begun reminding me of. An emotionally abusive marriage. “It doesn’t matter what he does, he loves me anyway.” “It doesn’t matter what he says, I love him anyway.” Or, as Merlin put it in a genuinely distraught scene “everything I do is for him, but just he thinks I’m an idiot.” Yes, exactly! But unfortunately, Merlin has reached that uncomfortable position where his sense of perspective is completely skew-whiff and even brief moments of clarity are not enough to lead to following the obvious course of action. The boy desperately needs an intervention. I thought Gaius, carefully washing horseshit off the aforementioned sorcerer’s face (long story), was going to finally give Merlin the long-overdue “girl, please” talking-to. But instead he fed Merlin the same tedious “your destinies lie together” bullshit peddled by the dragon. And none of Merlin’s other friends seem able to sit down with him and explain that the sun, in fact, does not shine from the royal arse and just possibly the one or two times Arthur hasn’t just stood by and let Merlin die doesn’t completely equal the eleventy-three times Merlin has saved Arthur’s life, not to mention the aforementioned memorable time he voluntarily swapped his own life for Arthur’s. “His life is worth a hundred of mine,” Merlin said then, with the burning eyes of the fanatic. Yet Gaius panders to it, Gwen is too blind in that direction herself, and Morgana is well on her way to being so thoroughly off her rocker as to have no really valid opinion on anyone else’s healthy mental state.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about the whole situation is when you recap why Merlin has devoted life and limb to Arthur. Merlin is not from Camelot himself, or even from a land under the rule of Camelot. He accepted at only a crazy, imprisoned dragon’s word that he is destined to protect Arthur from surprisingly regular and frequent attempts on his life, in order to create a Camelot where magic is allowed and, indeed, a Camelot which, via military campaign, will ‘unite’ the other pesky kingdoms on the island to create Albion, in what sounds like a sensationally ambitious and sinister adventure in imperialism. Where the dragon gets his intelligence from is not at all clear, but presumably it is from this ‘Old Religion’ everyone bangs on about without actually ever talking about the New Religion. So to recap further: Merlin is taking up arms to expand a foreign regime which persecutes magic in the name of a religion no one believes in – including, presumably, himself until he met a mad dragon kept tied up in cave for reasons Merlin doesn’t categorically know. Considering Merlin – and our – exposure to magic has, with the exception of Merlin and Gaius, been entirely negative it makes his eagerness to accept this extraordinary claim sometimes difficult to sympathise with. Nimueh, Sigan, the Sidhe, the dragon, Morgana, Mordred, the Black Knight, Knight Valiant, the Questing Beast, that chap with the unicorns – why wouldn’t Uther fear magic?! Why wouldn’t Arthur fear it, and why would Merlin naturally assume that the dragon is right and an imperial superstate where magic can run riot would be some sort of idyll? I’m not saying Uther’s violent authoritarian regime is any way acceptable, but I am saying the writers need to put in some legwork on the pro-magic front and demonstrate the ‘normal’ face of magic – presumably Camelot is full of sorcerers being oppressed from practising their perfectly peaceable and harmless arts. We just never see them. If Merlin really were fighting the good fight on their, and his own, behalf then his valiant struggle would be sympathetic and honourable. But because the magic folk we see are all utterly bonkers and because Merlin’s thoughts on the subject of freedom to practice magic are entirely based around wanting Arthur to see his magical powers, it sort of comes across as pathetic.

Merlin doesn’t really get his faith in Arthur, the dragon’s predictions of Arthur’s future wonderful reign and the trust that legalised magic wouldn’t, in fact, be a bad idea from a crazy dragon. He accepts his destiny so eagerly because he is, quite simply, obsessed with Arthur. The answer to why Merlin so quickly takes on the responsibility is not just a matter of ego – he is allowed an ego, given that he seems to be the only magician who isn’t a homicidal maniac – but because he is, quite simply, obsessed with Arthur. There is no other way to read the situation. It was even clearer in the latest episode. He is hopelessly devoted and, in the time-honoured tradition of a person in such a quandary, seems to actively seek out opportunities to be humiliated by, angry with and resentful of the object of his deluded affections.

Even as Merlin becomes ever more bonkers for the prince, Arthur becomes even crueller and less faithful, wise as he is with his royal power, he is power mad in his relationship with Merlin, because Merlin lets him and because that is generally what happens in such a set-up. In good times he teases, in bad times he drops Merlin altogether. His indifference and lack of gratitude has become so expected that his reaction to Merlin saving his skin again – ordering Merlin to perform his menial tasks without acknowledging Merlin had demonstrated more wisdom in distrusting Cedric (notwithstanding the fact it was a distrust based patently on jealousy rather than any sort of character insight) – has become a standing joke to Merlin and Gaius, albeit one Merlin clearly doesn’t see the funny side of, given his tears over the very subject earlier in the episode. It’s possible the whole surrendering his life for Arthur’s which ended the last series has finally sent Merlin completely over the edge – he’s mad enough about Arthur to do that, and Arthur ditches him the first time he falls asleep in a stable. It would make you cry, it would make you angry, and it would make you in even sorer need of the sound philosophy of Our Ladies of the West Side.

So, Merlin, since no one else seems capable and/or inclined to man up and tell you this, I shall: He’s just not that into you. Do what you have to do, but do it for yourself and your own, not for him. Get on match.com and find some other nice sorcerers, find your ongoing cause there, at least until Arthur begins to change his tune just a little. Because, and I say this as someone who has been there, you need to stop, look and listen to what you are getting back from him and it is NOTHING.

Oink, oink, or; What to do in Malibu when you're feverish

"Are you sure it's not allergies?" the testy voice asked at the end of the line. "Look, I know all the media is encouraging everyone to think they have Swine Flu, but we can't give out stacks of Tamiflu to everyone with a sniffle."

Thus discouraged and humiliated by the hopelessly inaccurately named NHS Helpline I boarded a transatlantic flight, and infected everyone from Heathrow to LAX with my horrible, horrible spores of disease. My father, who only sees me every eighty-five years or so, consequently spent most of my visit trying to keep me away from his newborn son and feeding me drugs. Monkey then caught it and, in turns out, infected flights both ways from LAX to Dallas/Fort Worth, and a transatlantic flight the other way. So - thanks, NHS. Nice one.

So here's how I entertained myself while grounded with swine flu.

1) Trying to get to know my newest half-sibling while not breathing on him

I am, biologically speaking, an only child, but I also have no fewer than ten half-siblings and I cannot even imagine how many step ones. I have a very complicated family life. I have ex-half-stepbrothers I am closer to (literally and metaphorically) than my half-sisters. The only ones I really consider to my siblings are my older brothers, who are biologically my half-brothers, but legally my real brothers. Or something. It doesn't really matter. The point is, I don't know my father's current wife at all (and I don't really know her predecessor, and the two kids from that marriage), so I wanted to make an effort to go and see this newest sprog. I think my father appreciated the gesture but would have rather I hadn't bothered what with bringing a pandemic into his house and everything, and the wife was certainly not enthused, but I didn't like her at all anyway, either when feverish or not.

2) Allowing love for Colin Firth to conquer all
My latest stepsister has an interesting variety of DVDs, but the most alarming one was "What a Girl Wants", which stars Colin Firth who was, presumably, closing his eyes and thinking of his family throughout the making thereof. I mean, he's obviously giddy-makingly gorgeous and dreamy and just deliriously wonderfully cute and frankly just the sight of him makes me drool and twitch a bit and he wouldn't be safe in the same room as me - but fuck me that's an awful film. Like, I've seen Hope Springs - it's entirely possible I own Hope Springs somewhere at home - anyway, I've seen it, and What A Girl Wants makes it look like a fucking Hollywood glory days classic. I mean, honest to God, dreadful. Almost genuinely shockingly bad. There is nothing redeeming about it. I mean, much as I like to criticise etc, I have to say, what a depressing set that must have been because you would have needed to be either high, stupid or incredibly blinded by money to have thought you were doing anything remotely worthwhile. Amanda Bynes, the notional star, is just terrible in it (although she is by no means a generally terrible actresss - I loved her in Hairspray), the script (such as it is) is woeful, even the basic idea behind the script is shit and in a strange way Colin Firth, Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins sort of make the experience even more painful because they're obviously fantastic, but how they got pressganged into it, I'll never know. In the end my dad and I decided there must have been some sort of incident at the Groucho one night and someone got photographs. This is irrelevant. Insulting as it is to common sense, intelligence, wit and the whole English nation, Colin Firth somehow, somehow made it all tolerable just by being so utterly scrummy. He may not be smoldery as he was as a youngster, but there is something so innately decent about him he's....I'll shut up. But God, where are all the men like THAT?!

3) Considering the Hershey bar

Hersheys is a mystery to me. I've lived in the US, and it is an utter conundrum as to how the biggest superpower the world has ever known subsists on such terrible chocolate. If that is even chocolate. Is Hersheys chocolate? Nobody knows. I suspect it is a unique chemical compound in its own right. Possibly carcinogenic, almost certainly radioactive. There is a reason there is a http://www.britishcandy.com/ which ships worldwide, and may I take a moment to recommend it?

4) Confirming Rainbow Road on Mario Kart is literally impossible on 150cc

And it's really hard on 50cc and 10cc too. But in my recovery period I really had nothing else to do for hours on end than try and crack that one track on 150cc and it is IMPOSSIBLE. Official.

5) Wondering who the hell thought the Disney Concert Hall was a good idea.

Ugliest building in America, and there is significant competition for that title. It's taken me a long time to figure out why I loathe it as much as I do, but I've finally decided it's the overly reflective nature of it. LA has enough retina-blazing sunlight with any more of it being directed to ground level, thanks all the same.

6)Reliving gloriously mindlessly violent 1970s policing

My father hasn't lived in the UK for twenty-two years, but has become weirdly militantly patriotic in his absence (probably because he isn't around to see the disintegration of society etc, and also because he lives in LA, which could make you nostalgic for just about anywhere). Anyway, I bought over his Christmas presents since I wouldn't be seeing him: The Sweeney and The Professionals boxsets. Both he and I have spent two months greeting all his stylish Californian friends with phrases like: "awright, sunshine?" It was also quite handy having someone who remembered the 70s about to translate lines like: "So why are you standing around like a motorway breakfast?" It is painfully obvious to me where I get my taste in rubbish television from. Rubbish, yes, but fabulously entertaining, and the sheerest escapism. The world in which Bodie, Doyle, Carter and Regan operate is seductively simple. There are heroes, villains, laydeez and hot cars. What's not to love? Although I think my favourite character out of both the series is Bodie, a man who single-handedly creates the anarchy, acts of terror and crimes against the public which he supposed to be preventing.

Harry Potter and the Shit Hitting the Fan

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” begins with Harry covered in blood and stunned, and things don’t much pick up for him from there. After a brief flirtation at Surbiton station of all places, Harry is pretty much back in Hogwarts and up shit creek.

I like the Harry Potter films, and I’m not here to diss this one. I liked it. It was alright. It was slightly embarrassing, as the only person in the cinema to apparently not know the book off by heart, as I kept jumping and gasping with each plot twist. Not that there is much twisting. The first half of the film is essentially teenaged hijinks involving those terrible and scarring first forays into romance we all know too well. The second half was frankly terrifying and had been shrinking in my seat. But then I’m one of approximately three people in the world over five years old that haven’t read the books. This gives me a rare perspective on a global phenomenon. It’s an extreme downer, is my concise summary.

THE GOOD

1. Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix

Not in it nearly enough, but utterly fabulous, completely and unreservedly mental, yet weirdly attractive and totally wonderful. I love Helena Bonham Carter. I have a huge girl crush on her.

2. Ron and Harry Experimenting with Drugs

Rupert Grint is by far the best actor out of the three, but Daniel Radcliffe and he perfectly nailed the comic parts. The stand-out moments were Ron stoned on a love potion and Harry speeding on luck potion. Hilariously written, directed and performed.

3. The Opening

Fabulous shots plunging you through London, culminating in the Millennium Bridge wobblin’ like it’s the year 2000 all over again.

4. Innuendo? What innuendo?

Ice cream licking and unfortunate timing of the question “did you do it?” Way above the kiddies’ heads but chucklesome for it.

The Bad

1. Hermione

Or rather, I suppose, Emma Watson’s interpretation of Hermione. I’m being generous and saying it’s her interpretation and not her total lack of acting talent, because I think, after careful consideration, it must be. The girl has been in front of a camera since she was 10 or 11 years old. Surely to God she isn’t that tense unintentionally? Throughout the entire film – and the last film too – Hermione has been resolutely emotionless. Every exclamation or facial expression seems to be a force of desperate will, overcoming a rigidity that’s extraordinary and even distracting at times. In this one, when she cries over Ron, it was painful to watch because of the sheer physical strain which it seemed to be to try and squeeze out one solitary tear, which incidentally I don’t think she actually managed, she just scrunched up her face. Is Hermione solid ice in the middle? That’s not how you cry over boys when you’re sixteen, the water pours out your eyes, the snot pours out of your nose, your face goes all squidgy and you howl, yes howl on your best friend’s shoulder. Hermione just sort of scrunched up her shoulders, closed her eyes tightly, and lay her head on Harry’s shoulder. Emma Watson may be beautiful, brainy and rich but surely even she has cried over a boy before? In which case, it must be a choice to play it that way, but it was weird. Even her love for Ron is so chilly – it seems to have by-passed adolescent devotion and landed at marital intimacy – that when she looks at him it’s mostly with disgust. Promising to stand by Harry sounds like a threat. Please God let Hermione melt at some point, because the wringing out of basic human emotion is starting to get really hard to watch.

2. Harry and Ginny

Oh dear oh dear. Well, there were two problems here, neither of which are anyone to do with film’s fault. Firstly, I am told by sources in the know that the relationship is deeply unconvicing even in the books. Secondly, Harry and Ginny were cast as children, before either had chemistry. It is unfortunate that they have grown up to have absolutely zero with each other. Below zero, even. If anything, it’s a sibling-like thing, which just makes a weird situation creepier. Watching the kiss, I swear to God, was like watching the forcing together of two repulsing magnets. They just about made it, but sprang away from each other with evident relief, shared by the audience. It made my skin crawl, it was so unnatural and hideous to watch. Re-cast Ginny, is the only advice I can think of. It’s cruel and unfair because she’s an okay actress, but I implore the producers not to make us watch them all through the last two films, I don’t think I can stand it.

The Ugly

1. Draco’s Feet

Just sayin’. Not meaning to get personal here, but....yikes. Excellent performance from him, though. You felt more fellow feeling and sympathy between him and Harry than you did between Harry and Hermione, which says everything you need to know about the aforementioned Ice Queen.

Not going away mad, just going away

At 3.30am this very morn, I was woken from my chardonnay-laced slumber by the sounds of someone trying to break into my flat. I lay in the dark staring at the outline of someone at my (first-floor) bedroom window, attempting to lift the sash which I knew was unlocked because I am stupid. At the start I was literally frozen with terror, I could move my eyes but nothing else responded. Every nightmarish headline I have ever read flashed through my mind. Had anyone else been in my flat at the time, had I not spent much of the evening getting drunk in front of sadistic serial killer television programme Criminal Minds, I might possibly have reacted in a more sensible or logical way than I did, which was wait until the sash began to creak, freak out entirely and throw my lamp at the window. At which my neighbour – for it was he – fell backwards off the porch roof he was delicately balancing on and crashed straight onto the pavement below, fortunately breaking his fall by semi-landing on the wheelie-bins. Let’s face it, Hotch and Reid would not have been impressed.

Thus it was that I ended up waking half the street, having to call an ambulance and sitting with the poor guy who was completely off his tits on something or another, and considering his English is extremely poor when he’s stone cold sober and not out of his head on drugs and extreme back pain, I don’t think either of us understood a word the other said, apart from general (and, on his part, I think very generous) sentiments of apology and mistakes. He is fine now, and will likely remember his key from now on, as that was the cause for him to stage an unsuccessful break-in on what he believed to be his own flat. Even though his flat is actually the floor above ours, but really, at 3.30am while tripping, I guess that can happen to anyone.
Anyway, such moments I think provide moment of thought. I wasn’t in any danger from my wayward Polish Arthur J Raffles, but the point is from the moment I realised someone was at my window, the fear that gripped me was of the dawn of a new part of my life so dreadful that all the little nuisances and irritations currently plaguing me were non-issues. For one thing, I might have been dead, but weirdly that didn’t scare me quite as much as the prospect of what he might do to me before that. In other words, things slip into perspective.

Breaking up is never easy to do, or so I have heard. Certainly personal experience has always backed up this hypothesis. Breaking up is even harder when it is more or less entirely by mutual consent. It means the tedious business of sorting out the bureaucracy – bills, Wii games, driving licences, internet subscriptions – everything that needs to be changed or shared becomes a ridiculously overly-emphasised game of swapping platitudes. Elaborate politeness can only stretch so far across the Atlantic, but we are doing our best. Because basically I’m the one doing the practical stuff and let me tell you that is the exact the opposite of how things have been done for years in this partnership.

The last few weeks have not been an unmitigated joy, with general feelings of guilt, personal recrimination and regrets swilling around in a heady cocktail concluding in last night’s plunge into a vino coma drooling in front of Aaron Hotchner breaking doors down in his FBI vest while waving his gun. One sentiment which I took in even before my brush with death was a quote mentioned in the show from Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead: “We cross our bridges and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered”. At the time, I heard it in a pessimistic, self-pitying sense, but post-great-cat-burglary I see it differently. I feel the loss strongly, but I’m okay. And I’ll be better. It is all good, and that memory of smoke and eyes watering are a good thing, not something to regret.

Although I’m going to start locking my windows now I’m by myself more.

Farewell, ER. It's been a slice.

Carol Hathaway turns to Doug Ross in their bed in Seattle and gives him good news. The kidney from one of their dead patients has been given successfully to “some doctor” in Chicago.

And I, in my living room in London, burst into tears. That wasn’t even the last episode of ER, but the valedictory note was enough to dissolve me. Hathaway and Ross didn’t know it, but the “some doctor” was John Carter, the most luckless character in television history and their former comrade-in-arms at Cook County General. It was heart-breaking they didn’t know (especially after meeting Sam and Neela and reeling off a list of names to see if they had any mutual friends, yet mysteriously not including Carter’s, presumably to avoid an interchange that would tip them off about the kidney’s destination. Would Doug really ask about Anspaugh before Carter? Unless Carol had heard through a nurse friend that Carter was in Darfur. But if so, why didn’t Doug mention the nurse? It’s possible I’m overthinking this); but it also felt completely right. They had moved on, and as they have, so has television: ER, once the coolest kid on the televisual block has, after fifteen years, reached the end of the road.

Gates, my favourite of the newbies on ER, didn’t even recognise Carter when he turned back up again (to the wonderful strains of “The Town Where You Belong” by Earlimart, a brilliant LA band that deserves 20,000% more recognition that it gets on either side of the Atlantic). “Are you the one that got that nurse pregnant and moved up to Seattle?” he wondered. “Come on!” Cecile and I shouted in unison. I mean, nice that Gates got the right season, but isn’t getting stabbed and becoming a drug addict the sort of gossip that would last nine years, rather than starting a family with your girlfriend and moving to the Pacific Northwest? Added to which, can you even imagine back in the day anyone confusing Ross with Carter? Carter sighed and said: “No, that was someone else.” Later on, he had to explain to Banfield why he was on dialysis: “some years ago, I was involved in an incident here. I was stabbed by a patient and a med student was killed.” God, it really was “some years ago”, and it wasn’t any med student, it was Lucy! Carter’s voice and face registered that knowledge, but it meant nothing to Banfield. After having his competency constantly questioned – which is so 1995, and Neela ain’t no Benton – he ended up talking to some random doctor who didn’t know him. “I’m, well, new, sort of,” he explained.

Oh hell no. Excuse me? Unacceptable. To paraphrase Norma Desmond, it isn’t that Carter got new; it’s that everyone else got, um, newer. Carter was new in 1994, and I know, because I was there watching him. That shot of Greene staring at someone that was in the old, good, original credits? That was the last time Carter was new, and Greene died seven years ago. So shut up, everyone, and step off my boy. “It’s like bizarro ER,” he observed. “Kind of the same, but every little thing is different.” To which the world’s viewers sighed as one: “Amen.”

But time passes. Carter was right. ER isn’t the ER it once was, the people have changed, the show has changed. The last series has brought constant reminders of absent friends – Carter, Ross, Hathaway, Weaver, Corday, Benton, even poor dead Greene have all turned up again. The nostalgia has been practically overwhelming, even before Rachel Greene, former sweet toddler, turned nightmare teen, turned medical student, rocked up. And really the only continuum has been the viewer and the set. Even the set changed over the years. And God knows this viewer has – I was ten when ER began, my mother watched the first episode and decided there was too much blood, so I had to watch it for years in my brother’s room without her knowledge. She was utterly right, in my adolescence I was traumatised by many episodes of ER, tales of industrial accidents, paralysed kids, but most memorably a teenager so burned that he would die in days having a last phone conversation with his parents before they intubated him and he would not be able to talk again. That was years ago, and I can still remember the horror. Even the final episode has given me a new neurosis: a woman giving birth somehow managed to push her uterus inside out, something I really didn’t need to know was possible until after I have my future children.

Even its biggest fan would agree ER is no longer in its fullest glory, but it had a graceful enough twilight and frankly, after fifteen years, every single person who has been involved must be, and should be, incredibly proud. Extraordinarily few series manage over five years, and even a long-running quality series like The West Wing reached the end of its road after seven, not a moment too soon. ER’s special.Probably ER’s secret was always its ensemble casting. The satellites around whom the department revolved – Mark Greene, Carter, Ross, Carol, Abby Lockhart, Kerry Weaver, Archie Morris; changed over the years, but always the cast was strong. You had the nurses and desk clerks that were always there – Lydia, Haleh, Malik, Lily, Shirley, Jerry, Randy, Frank. There were deaths – Lucy, Pratt, Gant, Romano, Greene, Gallant; births – Carol, Elizabeth, Susan, Benton, Chen and Abby’s kids; and there were endless, endless loveless romances, mostly involving, in different combinations, Carter, Abby, Neela and Kovac – ER’s single recognisably happy romantic relationship was Carol/Ross. It’s had epic friendships: Greene/Ross, Carter/Benton, Romano/Corday, Susan/Greene are the most memorable ones.

Some medical students went on to be great doctors – Carter, Neela; some were disasters – Malucci, most notably. There were terrible disasters: stillborn babies, divorces, loss of limbs, drug addiction; but there was time for basketball in the ambulance bay, many practical jokes, parties in the lounge and chilling in Doc Magoo’s (before it burned down). You didn’t bond with every character, you didn’t need to. You don’t like Cleo, or Pratt, or Abby? No problem, there are about twenty other characters you can still care about. Added to which, people came and went with such frequency that invariably the person you hated would be out the door in two years. The ensemble meant ER beautifully manufactured a world into which you could slip every week, where you knew the people and the score.

Over the years ER has given television far more than just George Clooney to ogle (personally, I always did and still do find Noah Wyle more swoonsome, but appreciate most of womankind see this differently). It pretty much invented smart television that didn’t spell everything out for you, rapid-fire, jargon-filled dialogue, epic Stedicam action, multi-strand episodes with resolutions which were sometimes unsatisfying, sometimes never known. ER didn’t treat the viewer like they were stupid, it threw you in and whether you kept up or not was entirely up to you. The West Wing couldn’t have happened without ER, The Wire couldn’t have happened without ER. On a significantly less important scale, I wouldn’t be in television without ER, and I’m sure that applies to others too.

Aged 16, sitting next to my mother, both of us sobbing our hearts out, as Lucy expired (thereby entering my TV Hall of Fame as Lucy/Carter became one of the Great Television Couples That Never Were), it was a demonstration of the power episodic television has, which feature films cannot hope to challenge. I’ve never understood how you can really care or root for people you’ve only known for two hours. But inviting characters into your living room for an hour every week for years – now that’s wielding emotional power, for laughs and for tears alike. We’ve gone to that hospital weekly for fifteen years! Carter has effectively lived his adult life on our television screens: he started as an adorable, clueless med student in his early twenties and matured through personal and professional disasters on an almost operatic scale to emerge a mostly adorable, hardened Attending in his mid- thirties, but still recognisably the kid who once couldn’t put in an IV. Watching him realise his unborn baby was dead, and supporting his wife giving birth to it was totally devastating. It was only right he didn’t get a tied-up ending. Carter was as in flux as the series, no one would have believed an ending for him, happy or sad. He’d become too real to have an ending – he was irritating, smug and self-righteous towards the time he left the regular cast, but dammit, he was Carter. He was our smug, self-righteous irritant.

That’s why I love television, and that’s why I work in it. Even when it’s all rubbish and horrible and you want to die and you’re about eighty- three pages behind schedule at ten in the morning, or your director is freaking out, or it’s raining, or you’re losing light (or chasing dawn) or the stock is damaged: that’s the thing you know you’re working for. Not everyone saves lives; in the big scheme of things most peoples’ jobs aren’t heroic. TV most certainly isn’t. But it’s fun and it’s satisfying, not just for the people who make it, but hopefully the viewers too. It’s about the adrenaline, not BAFTA.

In fifteen years, ER has had its lows: After Season 6, it became noticeably darker and not, I think, for the best. With Ross’ easy charm and good humoured bantering gone, and Carter never the same after the stabbing (a shame, since Noah Wyle has sensational comic timing – who can forget him finding a snake in a cupboard?), much of the comedy that characterised the early years went missing, never to be seen again. After about Season 10, it had become almost a different show altogether – far more soapy, with beautiful young people as all the main characters and more and more concentration on the disasters ER characters routinely made of their love lives. Other lowlights: Romano’s ridiculous death, Greene and Corday’s deeply unconvincing romance, Carter’s mysterious inability to summon up any sort of sexual tension with anyone apart from Lucy, Abby’s endless misery, all of Pratt and Sam, most of Chen, Weaver’s personality transplant, Kovac’s crashingly dull struggle with his demons. Oh, yeah. There have been major blunders.

But so what? Fifteen years. The level of writing, acting and directing has never really dropped substantially for long. It’s not been anywhere near as good as once it was – but then once it was so good, that even bad ER is better than most other things. I still kind of feel that they’ve just turned off the cameras, and County General is still running somewhere, albeit staffed by whiney, nymphomaniac incompetents.

It’s sad that ER, which didn’t just lead the field but effectively invented it, has lost viewers to such processed, formulaic and vacuous shit as Grey’s Anatomy and House. ER, as each departing old-timer on the show traditionally exhorted the one left behind, set the tone. But everything has a shelf-life. TV should thank God for ER. I thank God for ER, and bid all involved, real and fictional, adieu and fair sailing.

The Wire: The view from the outside

Monkey has been dispatched to Heathrow, rather grumpily, what with it being at 4am. Television never sleeps! Anyway, he's off for two weeks, sticking cameras in the faces of hardened criminals across Central America and the Caribbean or something. I don't know much about this project because whenever I ask he adopts a smirk and informs me I would be worried if I knew. The extent of my worry for him is that he is clearly suffering from arrested adolesence, and still imagines he is James Bond. As it is, I am highly concerned for my digital camera, which he has taken with him. My last one was stolen from me on a shoot in Kingston (Jamaica, not London), and if another one gets nicked in similar circumstances I'm going to be furious. Being a cameraman, he has about six digital cameras of his own, but apparently mine was the only one he was willing to risk on his dangerous mission.

This has worked out rather well, because has scored a double whammy of losing her job (redundancy) and breaking up with her boyfriend in the same week and is consequently sleeping on my sofa and taking the Kilburn air. Neither activity seems to be particularly benefiting her poor, addled state. It's working out reasonably well, though, which looks hopeful should we decide to flatshare together after the impending Move. Anyway, Cecile's initial stage of grief involved lying on the sofa listening to "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Dusty Springfield over and over again, which is a beautiful song but on loop it can only lower the spirits, what with all the drama over the Move. When I put my iTunes at her disposal (she and her boyfriend had made the frankly disastrous decision of having a joint iTunes, which now means it is entirely tainted for her, poor love), she just listened to Laura Marling's wonderful but really depressing album "Alas I Cannot Swim", which I would recommend in any circumstance other than having just lost job and boyfriend in one fell swoop.

Anyway, along with Cecile came The Wire boxset. It has sat for some days on top of my West Wing boxset. Whenever Cecile surfaces from her slough of despond, it is generally to berate me for not having cracked into it. How could I consider myself a true TV-phile if I didn't think The Wire had the edge on King Lear for drama?

The thing is, I don't dislike The Wire. I really don't. It is fantastically written, it is beautifully acted and the look of it is sensationally fresh and new. I don't dislike it. I just - and society has made me feel monstrously guilty for saying so - don't much like it. I rented the first series through LoveFilm and honestly, half the time I forgot I had the disc. I used to have to go through every possible prevarication before putting the damn thing in, and then when I had finished the disc I would take forever to put it back through. I don't exactly blame The Wire evangelicals for this reluctance, but it really did feel like work. The parts are marvellous, but the whole left me cold.

For me, television has to make you care deeply, profoundly, about what's going on. Dawson's Creek for example - terrible in almost every way - but when I was thirteen the sight of Pacey writing on a wall "Ask Me To Stay" for Joey set the bar for my romantic hopes for the future. In that sense -for me- Dawson's Creek is the more successful piece of television than The Wire. It stayed with me. Nothing about The Wire has stayed with me, really. Its technical achievements, I very much hope, will continue to be developed and taken on by series that have characters with a pulse, but McNulty etc don't do it for me. Each episode should grip you, both in and of itself and also create a lasting relationship with the characters - ask Charles Dickens. If I'm not frothing at the mouth with concern for McNulty, the job isn't done and I know the show isn't for me. Virginia Woolf once wrote that writers can build beautiful houses with their prose: "but what if life refuses to live there?" I feel like that with The Wire. That doesn't make me stupid. It just means it is possible for intelligent people to watch The Wire and not think it is the best thing ever on television.

The argument that it's too revolutionary to tick mainstream boxes doesn't wash. Other series have managed to break boundaries without having to create a UNESCO status for themselves, which is what the producers and stars of the thing have somehow managed. You don't like The Wire? That just means you're not recherche enough, is the general theme. Whatever. How good can a show actually be if no one watches it? Surely the only real measure of success is that people like your show and watch it - otherwise, what the hell are we making it for? This isn't high art, it's a business. Why don't UK companies make things like The Wire? people ask. Because no one would watch it. Would you want the BBC to spend millions on a programme 500,000 people would care about? People don't want The Wire on primetime.

The Wire is television made status symbol, and it's nauseating. Its more militant fans need to get it straight that to know it is not to love it, and it doesn't make you a better person if you do love it. It is actually really quite okay not to like it. Moaning about apparent unfairness of treatment is equally ridiculous. Bottom line: TV is about appealing to the masses. Fact.

This and that or some such shit: Easter in the nursery

I am feeling rather proud of myself, having just reduced my seven-year-old niece to tears on Easter Sunday. There is, you see, a ban on High School Musical/Hannah Montana bullshit in the house. This ban was my idea, and indeed the condition on which I came home for Easter. After this Christmas, when I very nearly drowned in sentimental bollocks from the Disney Corporation, I flatly refuse to go through that again. I police this very strictly, and have just confiscated a High School Musical soundtrack which was deafening us all. "It's for your own good," I informed the howling spoilt brat. Which indeed it is, as both shows put across an extremely warped and unnatural vision of the world, in which boys are so weirdly asexual that you feel if you pulled down their trousers they'd have no genitals and girls are pretty innocents only concerned with true love. Both demand conformity and condemn imagination. "One day you'll be very embarrassed, and in the meantime if I hear When There Was Me and You one more time I'm going to implode in on myself." I have lost some superiority though having eaten so much chocolate and drunk so much wine I now have such a bad stomach ache I'm lying on the floor in my bedroom, my mother's cat slumbering against me. My niece has recovered sufficiently to be massacring the Harry Potter theme tune on her recorder. Unfortunately there is nothing in the House Constitution which can lead me to ban this too, but something will be figured out before Christmas.

The niece taken care of thusly, it's only fair to point out that the riot shields were out yesterday for the nephews over Doctor Who. Opinion was divided over the quality of the show, an interesting exploration of a bus trip gone very badly, involving flying metallic stingrays, as far as I could tell. I don't know why bus trips must always end up with the flying metallic stingrays, but indeed they must. Is it worth pointing out that the 200 bus doesn't go anywhere near Victoria? It probably isn't. But it doesn't. Welshmen, what can you do. Anyway, aside from a rather confusing change to advertised bus routes and a cavalier attitude to law and order, I didn't think it was at all bad. Lee Evans was a revelation as a nerdy scientist, and wholly balanced out a slightly underwhelming Michelle Ryan who had a thankless character in Lady Christina. It was a jolly adventure, in happy contrast to most of Doctor Who these days, although ended up with a portent of DOOOOM from a psychic lady. "You'll knock four times," she warned the Doctor, which set me and my oldest brother (father of nephews) off on what we considered to be quite an entertaining re-imagining of The Postman Always Rings Twice.


My youngest nephew lapped up the Doctor Who, but the oldest nephew has, since the last time I saw him, morphed into a terrifyingly accurate version of Armstrong and Miller's RAF pilots. My nephew is 11 and goes to a highly respected public school, and consequently has the most cringingly plummy accent you can imagine but has, from influences unclear, picked up extraordinary lingo. "I has parsnips though, innit?" He remarked to my befuddled mother when she tried to give him another roast potato. "Can't have no more carbs though, it's like bad for you innit?" His reaction to Doctor Who was succinctly put: "The effects are totally sick, but it's like, all that exoskeleton shit, what?" No one had the least idea what he was on about, but we all understood the full meaning of "shit" and he was told off accordingly.

Anyway, said nephew poured the most extreme scorn on me when I elected (post-Doctor Who) to watch Primeval. It's worth noting I am a much-youngest child in the family, and consequently have enjoyed until recently far more "one of the gang" relationship with my nephews and nieces than their parents, but finally the generation gap is yawning before me. The contempt doled out by my nephew was astonishing. "It's like a kid's programme," he remarked. "I'm too old for it now, you know?" I'm not. I quite liked it, and truly didn't see the twist (such as it was) coming. I didn't think Primeval had the capacity to surprise. I am now quite intrigued to see a post-Cutter series. This could be the shot in the arm required to boost it somewhere into a dimension where Nephew A could acknowledge its existence.

In the meantime, me and my youngest brother are doing our best impressions of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar and Ginger in our capacity as the setters of good examples to our errant young relative. WINE!

If this isn't what Jesus intended for Easter, I don't know what he was on about.