BBC 'Mericuh

This season, I've been engrossed in the new series TORCHWOOD on BBCA. Never one for most brit scifi (Christ on a rubber crutch, did anyone else suffer through the hitch hiker's guide movie?) Including the doctor who series--it always seems to start and end in the middle, with much whispering and nuance, but little action or explanation.

Just not my bag, baby.

But I do like the Torchwood series, enough to record it weekly. Not a very slick production, by hollyweird standards, and even the special effects are to awesome what Wm. Shatner is to drama. The characters are flawed, and not glamorously sexy or smooth, but the actors do pull pull off a convincing tale. You can actually believe that a doctor is scrawny; that a computer geek is both Japanese and only semi-attractive (she is pretty, don't let me sell her short, but she's no Chiaki Kuriyama.) You can picture a female cop as something less than drop-dead gorgeous (Mariska Hartigay), and the male lead is--gay.

One of the things I find most interesting about that last line is that he isn't gay in the way Will and Grace portrays homosexuality, rather his homosexuality isn't the whole of his being. It's just a part of his character. Aside from a man-on-man kiss now and again (thank god for fast-forward) it isn't really apparent.

Just as sexual orientation should be, unless you are choosing a porn movie.

After the season closer, which was tonight, I left BBCA on for another screen gem. I caught the Dukes of Hazzard's original cast on The Graham Norton Show. That has to be the absolutely funniest hour of TV I have seen in a LONG time. Does anyone have any idea how I can pull it off of a DVR and put it in my computer? I HATE late-night TV, Leno and Letterman, and the lot of them have some of the most tired bits in the business. They are little more than shills for the different movie and recording studios, and the rest is just fluff.