The Usual Rant
Being a Brit I generally talk about the weather or the trains. The weather isn't bad for this time of year (although this week is distinctly darker when I get home, compared to last week) so I'm going to talk about the trains.
Yesterday the wonderful Leaf Fall timetable kicked in, which is a rather pathetic substitute for cleaning the tracks more often. The deal is that trains leaving for London in the morning leave slightly earlier (8 minutes in my case), so that when the wrong sort of leaves fall with the wrong sort of rain, the trains can still get to London on time. Well, that is the theory. Today the leaves haven't dropped yet, the train left 8 minutes early, and yet managed to arrive in London 10 minutes late.
Larry Wall will tell you that the principle virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. I think the platform staff at Liverpool Street heard this and misunderstood: they have the impatience to tell the hordes waiting on the concourse that their train is arriving shortly on platform 7 instead of waiting for it to clear first, and hubris to think this was a good idea, and the laziness to just sit there when they realise that two full commuter trains have just arrivied on the same platform, and the gates have just gridlocked.
Argh -- I don't want to be obsessed by trains, but the state of the rail network seems to enforce it at times.
[calming pause]
In other news, Luis is clearly mad. The "New Jeff" is a pale imitation of the Original Jeff, clearly added as they couldn't get Jeff back and they knew he was the main attraction for viewers. The forth series of Coupling should have been taken outside and shot without trial for its own good, it was that bad. I would recommend you to watch out for Green Wing to travel across the Atlantic, but I don't know if Channel 4 are able to sell programming across the pond.
NP: Keep It Unreal, Mr. Scruff
... however ...
Whilst I agree that the most recent Coupling was not as good as series 2-3, there were some seriously brilliant moments. Do agree that the Oliver character is a pale imitation but then it was never intended to be the same (reading Stephen Moffat's comments on the writing of the series).
Green Wing has grown on me - it's hilarious.
Green Wing is excellent. "Laura Ashley?" still makes me laugh, and I still can't believe Brian from Spaced is in it...
BBC America buy some shows from Channel 4.
Seeing as how most of the programmes on E4 are from HBO I would be surprised if HBO didn't use any shows from Channel 4 (I know that HBO at least uses Ali G in da USAII!)
