What makes good TV?

Over on Facebook, I've been making a load of comments about various TV shows, usually none too complimentary. It's not that I've been rude, it's more that much of what I've been watching hasn't really lit my fire, even when it comes to really popular shows like House or West Wing. Some readers seem to think that I'm simply not taking to American TV, but it's not that at all: I barely watched TV in the UK either for the last couple of years, so I've been catching up on various series on DVD to see what I've been missing, and mostly finding myself disappointed.

I don't like reality TV, I can't stand makeover shows, and I find most talk shows vapid. I really don't like comedy that's too close to my working life, so shows like The Office and the IT Crowd drive me crazy. I don't enjoy police procedurals, particularly not of the CSI vein, and I don't like medical dramas. I don't like gritty depressing reality, I avoid soaps like the plague, and I get bored by "monster of the week" supernaturals.

It's not that they're bad TV. Some shows of these types are really good, and I'm not for a moment denigrating them as a whole. But I've watched way too much TV, and now I'm bored by most of it, just as I'd finding it increasingly hard to find books I like or films that hold me riveted to the screen.

Anyway, one person eventually asked me the obvious question. What do I like?

Ummm.

That's actually a tricky one.

The only broadcast TV shows I've watched in the last year were Top Gear, Mock the Week and QI, and that surprises even me, as they're not really the sort of thing I normally watch.

I like to watch stories: drama, adventure, action, mystery, and intrigue. I like exotic or historical settings, larger than life flamboyant characters, and plots that stretch the imagination and the credulity. I like either a good long story told as a serial, or I like simple, snappy, self-contained episodes that you can pick up piecemeal, rather than "arc" programming where you sort of need to see the individual episodes in order or you can get mixed up. I like touches of humour in serious drama, and I like to be awed and amazed occasionally by both the breadth of the writer's vision and the visual richness. But most importantly, I like not being able to write the next line of the script or being able to predict the plot twists. I like to be surprised.

My tastes aren't defined by any particular genre. I like science fiction, for example: Firefly was superb, Dollhouse was really good, the first three seasons of Babylon 5 were brilliant, I loved the first two seasons of Battlestar, and the recent Sci-Fi channel Dune mini-series were outstanding. On the other hand, Star Trek doesn't do it for me, Farscape was so-so, and I think I grew out of Doctor Who when I was about 15. I can't just say "I like sci-fi". I'm picky. Very, very picky. (Or "selective", as I'd prefer to call it.)

Similarly, Deadwood was one of the most enjoyable series I can remember, but that doesn't mean I want to watch more Westerns. In historical programming, Rome was utterly compelling, (and so utterly different from I Clavdivs), I've watched every episode of Sharpe repeatedly, North and South was good, if dated, but Charles II was dull, and Blackbeard was utterly dreadful. (He was from Bristol, for crying out loud, what on earth possessed them to make him a Scot?) It doesn't have to be serious, either: Middlemen is wonderful cheesy fun, and Warehouse 13 is good, tongue in cheek adventure.

In a nutshell, I never know what I'm going to like, and I often find the shows I like best weren't the shows I expected to like.

I know as well as anyone that there's no such thing as a truly original story: all stories are reworkings of existing material, and there are certain conventions that we expect story-tellers to follow if they're going to produce a "satisfying" story. However, there is still scope for originality. I love genre-crossing - that's why I enjoyed Firefly so much, with its "cowboys in space" riff. I like genuinely unusual characters, not the usual "tired/rebellious/maverick cop with an incongruous taste for jazz/opera/blues", or the formulaic "buddy duo forced to work together who then become friends" (and if they're opposite sex, several seasons of will they, won't they). I'm really looking forward to No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, I wish I'd seen more of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, and I'm thoroughly enjoying watching Young Indiana Jones.

So, in short, my formula for TV success is this:

• Take me to a setting that takes me away from my everyday life;
• Show me characters that aren't cliched, even if they're stereotyped;
• Make me laugh, make me gasp, and surprise me, all in one episode;
• Give me sharp, tight writing, and;
• Either stay faithful to the source if that's what you're doing, or bring together elements that haven't been combined before.

Of course, that's no guarantee of commercial success. If it had been up to me, I'd have turned down most of the successful TV shows of the last 15 years. I'm aware that what I like isn't what you'd call mainstream entertainment.

But that's the beauty of the Net, and it's where machinima and other low-budget or zero-budget techniques really win. No TV company, especially in today's economic climate, can afford to take a chance, but amateurs can. I'm finding more and more that my entertainment needs are supplied by Web series and amateur movies such as The Mercury Men, and their production values are getting better and better.

Elephant's Trunk Nebula

Image (c) Paul Beskeen Astrophotography, 2009.

Wow. This is not a painting. This is the real thing, shot by my friend Paul, using the telescope in his back garden.

Click for more details and more prettiness.

Leapin' Lizards!

One of the things I like about this place is that there are lizards everywhere. And, to my surprise, they jump!

A nice cuppa

I'm slowly getting used to the fact that when I ask for tea in Florida, I'm not going to get one of these.

Nope, what you get is something completely different. For a start, it's cold. If you want hot tea, you need to specify hot tea. Then the chances are they'll bring you something made with green tea. You see, you should have said black tea if that's what you wanted. Then they helpfully go and put cream in it instead of milk. And then, if you wanted it sweetened, they pour honey in it. There's not much else they could do different. It is, in the words of the late, great, and much lamented Douglas Adams (who was, like me, an alumnus of St John's College, Cambridge) "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

It's easier just to accept that this is tea, and the good old English cuppa is something to be enjoyed in the comfort of my own home.

Little things

I've been in Florida for just over a month now, and while it's easy to focus on the big differences (huge thunderstorms, palm trees everywhere, people talking in strange accents, and everything being so much bigger), it's often the small things that make all the difference.

Take light switches, for example. They're all upside down. Down is off, and up is on. Well, the ones on the walls, anyway. The ones on lamps are strange twisty things instead of clicky pushy ones, which requires way more digital dexterity than I can manage last thing at night.

Now, coffee. We all know Americans are coffee experts. So, you want a cup of coffee. You boil the kettle, then you... uh, hold up there. The kettle? They don't have kettles here. If you want hot water, you boil up a pan of the stuff on the stove. If you're really classy, you can get an old-style kettle for the stove, like my great-grandmother used to have. You can go to Wal-Mart and choose from one hundred and sixty-three different models of coffee machine, but they offer precisely one type of electric kettle. They have machines for just about everything else in the kitchen, but not for making hot water. Weird.

This, my dear American friends, is a kettle...

... this is a piece of antiquated steam-age technology.

If you really want to confuse them, use a 24-hour clock. You'd have thought, given how militarized this place is, that they'd all understand what time 1645 is. But no. Seventeen hundred hours, sure, you can probably get away with that. But most of the time you're best off sticking with 12-hour clocks.

And then there's driving. Most of my driving in the US has been in California, and it's not quite the same here. As Maus pointed out, in Florida, they drive on both sides of the road. However, I haven't been brave enough to try that yet, and I'm sticking to the right for the time being.

Let's start with speed limits. As my instructor pointed out to me regularly, the speed limit means the maximum you can drive at. It doesn't mean you have to do that speed. And ever since I got pulled over for doing 32mph in a 30mph zone, I've always been seriously careful to stay below the speed limit. not on it. Here, though, it basically means that's the required speed. And since you don't get prosecuted until you're 5mph over the limit, the required speed is actually somewhere between 3.5mph and 4.5 mph over what it says on the sign. Drive at the speed limit, and you're likely to find yourself hauled over for driving suspiciously, holding up traffic, un-American activities, and anything else they can think of. 5mph over, and you're a dangerous lunatic who deserves to be run off the road. Since the speed limit changes every couple of hundred yards, the age of the computer-controlled car with sensors that know the current speed limit and adjust your speed accordingly cannot come fast enough.

No this isn't a local sign, but I loved the pic.

I was also fairly rapidly introduced to the concept of the "California stop". They have these STOP signs all over the place, which I've always understood to mean that you slow right down, pause, and then take your turn before proceeding. Not so in Winter Park, apparently. That's a California stop, and it's Bad. Very, Very, Bad. Here, STOP means STOP. Come to a complete halt, recite the Lord's Prayer under your breath, and then move off. Failure to stop at a stop sign is a monumental vehicular crime, the magnitude of which can only be compared to mowing down a crowd of school kids and war veterans in the midst of pledging allegiance to the flag during a Sunday church service on a site of national historical significance, and then smashing into a state memorial. Or hijacking the mayor's personal golf cart. Roll through a stop sign and it's Stop, Do Not Pass Go, Go Straight To Jail, Do Not Collect $200. Well, pay $200, or $400 if they feel like it. But you get the idea. And why do they have such odd amounts for parking fines? At the Winter Park Village, if you park in a handicapped space, the fine is $212, except in the space nearest the door of the shop, where it's $213. That makes sense. Don't park in that space, honey, it's an extra dollar if they catch you. Riiiiight.

Speaking of golf carts, though, the Winter Park police ride around in them. This is a country club city, so they fit in well. And in Orlando itself, they have bicycles. That's cool too. Up the road in Seminole Country, whoo-boy, that's a whole different story. The Sheriff's Department got a load of money from Jeb Bush a few years back, and they spent it on buying tanks. Yup, I said cops in tanks. Run a red light in Seminole, and you can have a 76mm shell up your tail-pipe and 5000 rounds of machine gun ammunition in your gas tank in under 3 seconds. (Actually, that might count as quite a big difference between here and England.)

And why, for God's sake, why is all the money the same size? It makes life so easy to sort your cash out when the notes are different sizes. I keep thinking I've got down to a small stack of dollar bills, and then I find a twenty in there. Or else I'm rifling through, hunting for the fifty I've lost in the middle of them.

Mind you, some things are considerably more complicated than they at first appear. I've just about got my head around the fact that courgettes are zucchini and aubergines are eggplants. Except, apparently, in posh restaurants where they're courgettes and aubergines. I guess it's like fancy restaurants in England where they give things French names, so you feel stupid if you don't know the foreign words. "Would Monsieur care for some pommes frites with his poulet avec fromage?" Uh, yeah, cheesy chicken & chips will do fine, thanks. Fries. Whatever. Oh, and there's a Science Center and an Arts Centre. See, it's classier in English. But they still don't understand if you ask them to hold the tom-AH-to. It's tom-AY-toes or nowt.

Still, I seem to be surviving well enough.

Seriously, though, you know what's really different? Not having goddamn CCTV cameras everywhere you go, on every street corner, every road sign, every shop, and every public building, recording your every move and keeping tracks on everywhere you go. Now that, I like. A lot.

Eatin' my way thru O-Town

It's kinda traditional for Europeans to take the piss out of Americans for being, how shall we put it politely, fat. Well, just try living here. Honestly, it's not their fault. Even if you avoid all the nasty greasy fast food, there's so much good eating on offer it's impossible to maintain a svelte figure without spending four hours a day in the gym. 

I've become a regular at the local farmer's market on Saturday mornings, where I load up with aubergines (eggplant) & courgettes (zucchini) as well as top quality honey, and oranges, and then feel morally obliged to stuff myself with cinnamon buns and Venezuelan pastries.  And then we've been working our way through the enormous Vietnamese supermarkets and filling the freezer with dim sum. Our current favourite is the Saigon market, which has a counter of unbelievably tasty French-style Vietnamese pastries. And, of course, there's now a Spice & Tea Exchange in Winter Park, so we have Pirate's Bite and salmon tea rub. So cooking's pretty much covered.

When it comes to eating out, there's loads of choice.  Highlights so far include:

The Enzian. OK, it's a cinema, not a restaurant, but the menu there is impressive. You don't get a huge portion, but it's really delicious stuff.  Just check out the meatball sandwich, for example.  Meatballs made with grass fed bison and fresh local pork, truffle parmesan tomato sauce, sauteed shiitake mushrooms. I mean, c'mon, how can that be bad?   Eating this while watching a movie makes for a great date.  The selection of wines and beers is pretty reasonable, but the absolute killer is the manchego cheesecake. It's cheesecake turned up to 11. It was a real struggle to finish one portion between two of us. 

The Black Bean Deli. This isn't eating out, in that there's nowhere to sit, so if you want to get picky, yeah, it's take-away. (Or take-out, as I'm learning to call it.)  This is the best Cuban food I've ever had.  Well, if I'm honest, it's the only Cuban food I've ever had, but everyone tells me it's the best I'm ever likely to find anywhere outside Cuba. The medianoche is filling and yummy - ham and cheese on Cuban sweet bread, and the chorizopan is similar, but with chorizo instead of ham.  One of their sandwiches for lunch, with a tub of rice and black beans, and then a flan to follow... oh yeah!  I can see this becoming a regular mid-week thing.  Set something rendering or uploading, a 10-minute drive down 17/92, grab myself a bag full of Cuban goodness, and then not bother with dinner.  No, really, no more food today.

El Bodegon. My benchmark for good tapas is whether it's as good as the Tasting Room in St Augustine. El Bodegon most certainly passes that test.  Tapas isn't really their speciality, but like any good Spanish place, they have a good selection on offer. Not so great for vegetarians - if you're OK with seafood, you'll be fine, but you really need to be a carnivore to enjoy this place. We munched our way through five plates with a pitcher of sangria.  The serrano ham was some of the best I've ever tasted, the patata bravas were just perfect, and the garlic mushrooms were succulent and mouthwateringly mushroomy. The piece de resistance, though, was the chorizo flambeed in brandy. Chorizo is good anyway, and I love the effect of pouring liquor on food and setting fire to it. We'll definitely be going back there for evenings when we can't decide what to eat and fancy a little bit of everything.  

The Nile Ethiopian Restaurant. No prizes for guessing the speciality of this place tucked away off I-Drive. Ethiopian food is quite unique, and something I love.  It's good communal finger food: it comes on a big tray, with piles of different dishes, and you eat it by scooping it up with pieces of pancakey sourdough bread. When it arrives, you wonder whether you've ordered enough. Two thirds of the way through, you wonder whether you can finish it all. The yasa tibs (fish) is truly gorgeous, the doro wat (chicken stew) is total yumminess, and I seriously recommend the veggie combo, even if you're not a veggie. Don't skip the coffee. They roast the beans right there, and then bring the pan round for everyone to have a sniff. It's the best coffee I've had that isn't Turkish. Try it if you're looking for a friendly meal with friends that's a bit out of the ordinary.

And there's more...  Urban Flats had a variable selection: basically posh pizza, the good ones were good, and the rest were mediocre.  Chipotle is just a Mexican fast food chain, but they do a damn good pork burrito, and it's all free-range, hormone-free meat, so it's actually good food, just served fast.  Tomorrow, we have a big family meal at Buca di Beppo, where I intend to eat pasta and chicken saltimbocca until I look like Luciano Pavarotti  Next, I need to try the various steakhouses (Ruth's Chris and Colorado's both recommended, for completely different reasons), and find myself some catfish and some grouper, and at some point I really need to get back to the bagel place...

We've been making the most of coupons from restaurant.com. Basically, you buy a $25 coupon for $10, so there's an instant saving of $15.  But it gets better. As the month goes on,they discount the coupons that haven't sold yet, and you can pick up a $25 coupon for $2.  We just spent a mighty $10 to buy ourselves $125 off in various St Augustine restaurants which we intend to use in about a week while we're on honeymoon.  And yes, that includes the Tasting Room. 

Oh, God, please can I have just a salad now? Before I explode?

The Pope Room in Buca di Beppo. Look, that's the Pope in the middle of the table. Holy spaghetti,  Batman!

(500) Days of Summer

"Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t." 

OK, that's all I'm going to tell you about this "postmodern love story and fresh and funny “anti-romantic” comedy". That's all I knew about it when I went, and all you need to know. 


It's post-modern. Yes, in the sense that it's deeply infused with irony, cynicism, and bleakness.

It's a love story. Yes, sorta, in the sense that it's a story about love.

It's funny. Hell, yeah. It has real laugh out loud moments throughout, in the dialogue, the filming, and everything else. Even the opening credits are funny.

Anti-romantic? Uh, sorta. Actually, I think it's a very romantic film, but not in the lovey-dovey sense.  Well, if you stick to the end, anyway.  Is that a spoiler? No, I don't think so. It's a will-they, won't-they film, and that, as far as I'm concerned, is inherently romantic. It's about how love can make you feel wonderful, and how no other feeling can come close.

I loved it. I also loved the rather wonderful Enzian, which has now become my favourite movie venue.  (Sorry, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, you'll always be special to me, but this place has you beat.)  You get to sit at a table, in a comfy chair, and they don't just let you take drinks into the movie, they bring you food and drink. And it's extremely tasty food and drink.  Check out the menu. I can recommend the meatball sandwich. Meatballs made with grass fed bison and fresh local pork, truffle parmesan tomato sauce, sauteed shiitake mushrooms... how can that be bad? And their beer selection is pretty reasonable too.  

The Enzian is home to the Florida Film Festival, and I'm looking forward to many more enjoyable evenings there, both at the movies and at the charming Eden Bar. It's a great place to sit and have a drink before or after the movie (though do remember that the Winter Park cops are wont to patrol the back lanes as well as the main roads!), and stare out at big green leafy things, palm trees, and purty flowers, or else look at the murals and chat to other cinema-goers. Mimosas at $2.50 all day? Bring 'em on!

Oh, yeah, that movie I was talking about half a page ago? See it. Maybe not rush-out-and-catch-it-before-it's-gone see it, but stick it on your rentals list for sure.