Trabia Garden

I know a few people following me are fellow fans of the original UK Taskmaster. If you need more Taskmaster in your life (and I certainly do), I cannot recommend the New Zealand version highly enough.

The Taskmaster NZ Taskmaster himself is no Greg Davies; the energy he brings to the show is more 'confused headteacher' than 'petty tyrant'. But my biggest concern about reproducing Taskmaster was that it would be impossible to fill the role of the Taskmaster's assistant. Alex Horne is so deeply, fascinatingly weird on Taskmaster, and so willing to do the most bizarre and humiliating things; surely nobody could replace him?

I'm pleased to report I was completely wrong. Paul Williams is absolutely perfect in Alex Horne's role; he sometimes feels more Alex than Alex does. The tasks are fantastic, too.

We've almost finished the second season of Taskmaster NZ, and I've loved every moment. Paul Williams had a fascinatingly weird dynamic with Angella Dravid in season one, and I was slightly worried that I'd miss it too much when Angella was no longer a contestant, but season two is also excellent. During the 'diss track' task, we had to pause so we could all lose it laughing for five minutes.

Riona: One significant difference between Alex Horne and NZ assistant Paul Williams is that Alex is a sexless being I struggle to ship with anyone, whereas I ship Paul with every single contestant.
Riona: It's not at all that Paul is sexy, but he has a very 'naïve young man on the verge of a sexual awakening' energy that makes me want everyone to kiss him.
RD: "teach the taskmaster's assistant how to kiss"
Riona: omg I have never wanted anything more
Riona: I'm thinking about this because I just watched the task 'take Paul on a first date, most romantic first date wins' and one of the contestants Lady-and-the-Tramp spaghetti-kissed him and it was magical.
RD: Okay that does sound good

I'm delighted that we gave the New Zealand version a chance! It's been a glorious bright spot in the stress of moving house. Malcolm in the Middle got us through packing, and Taskmaster NZ is now getting us through unpacking.

(Speaking of moving, Tem is now a member of our household! It's going to be so much easier to play weird games about murder together.)

Sometimes, when the screen goes dark between scenes in Attack on Titan, I catch sight of my reflection watching it.

I invariably look really distressed.

I've typed up some thoughts on Attack on Titan in the course of watching, but I can't post them because I don't want to spoil anyone! This isn't just a case of 'well, put it under a cut, then'; people who haven't watched it might still click on the cut! How am I supposed to stop them? I went in knowing nothing beyond the bare bones of the premise (it's an anime! there are giant monsters! they eat people! oh dear!) and the fact that it's a lot less cheerful than Free!, and it's an experience I highly recommend.

There are eighteen episodes currently available. I charged through the lot in about five days. I'd probably have finished faster if we hadn't suffered a power cut in the middle, and if there hadn't been a moment or two that hit me so hard I needed several hours to recover.

If you have the time and the inclination, give it a try! It's pretty depressing and occasionally bloody, I should warn you, so stay away if you think it might distress you, but it really is extremely worth watching. It's available legally here on Crunchyroll (in the UK, even! Legal anime websites are never available in the UK! If you're in neither the UK nor the US, I don't know whether you'll be able to watch it, but you can give it a shot). Try the first few episodes and see if it catches your interest.

I know I love a lot of terrible things, but Attack on Titan is genuinely excellent. And I repeat: you can watch it online, and it's completely free and completely legal. Although I can't guarantee that it won't make you watch the same Argos advertisement six times if you don't have an ad blocker. IT DOESN'T MATTER; ATTACK ON TITAN IS GREAT.

(If you'd like to know at least slightly more before you go in, futuresoon has made an informative post on Tumblr (which is actually what got me to start watching). She's also made a more detailed version of the same post on Livejournal, but I'd recommend using the Tumblr one to make your decision and only checking out the Livejournal one if you're still not sure; as I've said, the less you know, the better.)

Back in 2010, I attempted a self-imposed challenge: alphabet ficsnippets (A to M, M to Z). The idea was that the first snippet concerned one character whose name began with A and one whose name began with B, the second a B and a C, the third a C and a D and so on. As I had so much fun with them, I thought I'd attempt another type of alphabet challenge: snippets for each letter of the alphabet, each concerning two characters whose names begin with that letter.

As my snippets seem to be a bit longer this time, I'm probably going to post these in more than two instalments. This entry contains six: A, L, M, O, P and X, because I don't have the discipline to write them in alphabetical order. Also, I cheat outrageously in the very first ficlet by never actually having one of the characters appear or indeed be mentioned.

Fandoms represented in here are Glee, Final Fantasy XIII, The Mentalist, Death Note, Mulan, Red Dead Redemption, Dangan Ronpa, Phineas and Ferb, Kingdom Hearts and X-Men: First Class. Enjoy!


( Same-letter alphabet ficsnippets: A, L, M, O, P, X. )


And that's all for the moment!

The fabulously-named Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair, if you're curious, is a game about a group of students who have been trapped in a prestigious school; the only way to escape is to kill someone without anyone else finding out you did it. It's never been released in English, but it's being translated with screenshots over here; there are links to the entire story so far in the first post. If you're anything like me, you will become super high-school level attached to almost every character and then get really distressed both when murders are committed and when you realise who the murderer is. I read through the second chapter yesterday and ended up all teary.

(EDIT: Should probably mention that the Let's Play link leads to the Something Awful forums, which have a rather idiosyncratic profanity filter. For 'gently caress', read 'fuck'; for 'poo poo', read 'shit'. I think 'fucking' becomes 'loving' as well. Mondo Oowada's speech becomes very weird if you're not aware of this. (Mondo, incidentally, is my favourite and I love him.))

I actually started reading Dangan Ronpa because someone said that Touko Fukawa, the 'Super High-school Level Literary Girl', was me. This was, I have come to realise, rather an uncharitable thing to say.

Wow, Red Dead Redemption. I've played quite a few good-looking videogames, but I have to say this is the first time I've sat quietly in front of the screen, not touching the controller at all, and watched a virtual sunset for ten minutes.

And there's so much to do in this game! You can play Texas Hold'em poker with NPCs! Not only that, but there is an in-built cheating system that allows you to hide a card up your sleeve if you're wearing the right clothes for it. Not only that, but if you fail the cheating minigame you will be caught cheating and challenged to a duel.

They built in the ability to cheat at cards. That's attention to detail. Yes, there are elements that make the world feel slightly less real (the same guy keeps trying to murder the same prostitute in the same place no matter how many times I kill him, what the hell, he must have done this four times by now), but on the whole the game does a fantastic job of creating a world that feels vast and alive and dangerous and beautiful.

I'm not a big fan of the last part of the 'American Appetites' stranger mission, the one with the missing people up by Hanging Rock. Look, Red Dead Redemption: I am the least observant person in the world, and I could still work out that the terrified, unarmed man pleading with me not to take him back probably wasn't the culprit. It all ended well, if you ignore the part where I shot an innocent man in the leg to slow him down so I could hogtie him and nearly get him killed, but I was forced to make an incredibly bad decision before I was able to do the right thing, which - as I could quite easily see that it was an incredibly bad decision - bothered me a bit.

...and I just spoiled myself for the game's ending whilst trying to find out whether there's a way to complete that mission that doesn't require being an idiot. Blast! I really need to stop reading YouTube comments; my life is never any better afterwards than it was before.

I became very attached to the horse Bonnie gave me at the beginning of the game, and then I got another after the horsebreaking mission and I was quite distressed! The Kentucky Saddler and I are becoming good friends now, though. The horse-switch inspired me to look up horse breeds on the Red Dead Redemption wiki (yes, I'll concede that I am wandering into very dangerous territory if I don't want to be spoiled), where I found the following line on the Infested Ardennais: 'When riding this horse, the player will not look as visually pleasurable as some of the other horses offer.' This amused me immensely. 'Just so you know, you're going to spend an awful lot of this game looking at a horse's arse, so you might want to invest in a more attractively-arsed horse.'

Regarding the actual storyline: I really like Bonnie MacFarlane! I almost 'ship her and Marston, but it's difficult to when Marston is so obviously devoted to his wife. Regardless of that devotion, I'm filing 'addressing Bonnie as "Miss MacFarlane"' next to 'expertly tying people up' in Things John Marston Does That I Find Strangely Attractive.

This entry may have fairly limited appeal (number of people on my flist who have, to my knowledge, played Red Dead Redemption: two), so here, for the rest of you, is a video of a very brave kitten.

My brothers have been having a Prison Break marathon recently, and I've been wandering in to watch an episode or two here and there. I'd forgotten how incredibly compelling it is. And how distressing.

I had also forgotten how absolutely crazy the sexual tension is between Scofield and Mahone in the third series. It is nuts. Mahone always looks about half a second away from making out with whoever he's talking to anyway, but particularly so when it's Scofield.

I've been trying to find a clip with which to illustrate this crazy sexual tension for you, but alas I am having difficulty doing so. What I have found, however, is a pretty great Mahone/Scofield fanvid (by sdwolfpup). If you haven't watched Prison Break, you may think 'oh, well, clearly it's manipulative editing making it look as if Mahone has some sort of weird desperate obsession with Scofield'; let me assure you that no manipulative editing is necessary. THEY WERE KISMESES BEFORE HOMESTUCK MADE IT COOL.

The entire fanvid is worth watching - it does a fantastic job of portraying the progression of their dynamic - but if you're short on time and primarily interested in the aforementioned crazy-sexual-tension-filled series three, when Mahone is shaking and sweating and barely holding onto his last threads of sanity and occasionally slams a shank into the wall next to Scofield's head and breathes threats into his neck, you can skip to the three-minute mark. The first half, meanwhile, will appeal to those of you who like to watch besuited secret agents obsessively trying to track down their prey. Something for everyone! (Disclaimer: this may not cover the tastes of literally everyone.)

I should explain that homoeroticism is not the sole or even the primary reason to watch Prison Break. As I've mentioned, the storyline is incredibly compelling. What happens next? You have to know! And it centres on a do-anything-to-save-you brotherly relationship (come on, Supernatural fans, take the bait), and it has fantastic characters (I love Scofield and Sara and Sucre and Westmoreland and Tweener and C-Note and Mahone and the Pope; I can't say I love T-Bag, exactly, but I'm fascinated by him), and when they're in danger you care, because... well, are you tired of seeing main characters in seemingly life-threatening situations and knowing there's no real suspense because there's no chance that they'll actually be written off? It happens frequently in Merlin. Well, Prison Break kills off its main cast like nothing I've ever watched. When things go wrong, you're not thinking 'how do they get out of this one?'; you're thinking 'oh God oh God I really hope they get out of this one.'

(I would just like to reiterate how much I love Sucre. You know why he's in prison? He didn't have the money to take his girlfriend to a nice restaurant, so he held up a liquor store with a gun. The owner offered him the contents of the till. Sucre looked a bit embarrassed, took a single hundred-dollar bill and said, 'Actually, this is all I need. ...sorry.' He is the most adorable armed robber ever.)

And it will make you sympathise with everyone. You will be appalled by a character's actions, and a season later you will desperately want them to succeed. You will alternate between cheering T-Bag on and hating yourself for it because T-Bag is the worst person in the entire universe.

But also there's the homoeroticism. I'm not above tempting you to watch things by pointing to the homoeroticism. Have you watched that fanvid yet? Perhaps you should.

I was going to make a poll, but then I realised that I might not have enough Homestuck readers on my flist to make it worthwhile, so instead I'm just going to ask: do you have a favourite Homestuck troll? If so, does your favourite correspond to the sign of the zodiac under which you were born? I ask because I'm a Cancerian and my favourite is Karkat, so I'm wondering whether a bias towards the troll that represents one's own sign is common. It may well just be coincidental; Karkat is probably the most visible of the trolls, after all.

OR, WAIT: perhaps Karkat only represents Cancer when I am looking at the computer screen. Or perhaps he's only the most significant troll when I'm looking at the computer screen! PERHAPS PISCEAN READERS EXPERIENCE AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY WITH MUCH MORE FEFERI.

(If you're curious about Homestuck, which is a sort of text adventure/sprite-based game parody webcomic with a great cast of characters, you can find the beginning here. I should warn you, though, that it is really, really long (well over 2,500 pages and 150,000 words, and it's still going) and really, really convoluted. Also, at the beginning it takes many suggestions for actions from readers, meaning that the story moves quite slowly; later on, actions tend to be more inclined towards advancing the plot.)


Regarding Glee episode 2.05: stop doing themed episodes, Glee. Come up with the plot of the episode first, then choose the songs to fit it; don't decide on the songs you're going to use and then find a flimsy framing device.

Whilst I'm making demands, Kurt and Sam should make out. (Look, it's at least a more realistic request than Kurt and Josh, who, although he has the advantage of a compatible sexuality, goes to a different school in a different country in a different programme.)


TERRIBLE IDEA: Glee/Homestuck crossover.

CG:   WHAT THE HELL, NO.
CG:   I CAN'T EVEN EXPRESS HOW NOT HAPPENING THAT IS.
AC:   :33 < oh cmon karcat itll be fun!
AC:   :33 < i bet you have a purrfect singing voice!
CG:   WE ARE NOT EVEN HAVING THIS CONVERSATION.

(Er, that was meant to be a potential snippet from such a crossover, rather than Karkat and Nepeta's reactions to my suggestion, but I suppose it works as either.)


Finally, here is a ten-second clip of Catherine Tate and David Tennant that makes me crack up for reasons I can't fully explain. (I may not have been a fan of his Doctor, but from what I've seen of him I'm quite fond of David Tennant as a person.)

I would like to talk about something potentially controversial: Katawa Shoujo.

Katawa Shoujo is a free dating-sim type visual novel, in which all the potential love interests have some sort of physical disability: deafness, blindness, heavy burn scarring, prosthetic legs, no arms. I heard the concept and thought 'well, this sounds like the most horrendously creepy and fetishistic game ever made'.

And then I played the demo.

And it wasn't.

I've only played the first act, as that's all that has been released so far, but my overall impression is that it's a really charming, well-made, well-written game. The main character, Hisao, discovers that he has a congenital heart condition and is transferred to a school with specialist facilities for disabled students; there, he has to come to terms with his attitude towards his own disability and towards those of others. The people he meets are thought-out, interesting characters, rather than simply being reduced to their physical qualities. Rin, for example, is blunt, sarcastic, scatterbrained, creative, an artist and a daydreamer; the fact that she has no arms isn't ignored, but it's not what defines her.

I think Hanako and Lilly are my favourites so far. Hanako's extreme timidity reminds me of myself when I was at school; her path was the first I went down, because I wanted to try to help her increase her confidence in the way in which my friends helped me. Lilly is just so friendly and calm and caring, and she somehow manages it without being cloying. I'm really intrigued by the friendship they have with each other, too. (That's another way in which Katawa Shoujo surprised me; I've never played a dating sim before, so I thought all the potential love interest characters might be depicted as RIVALS FOR YOUR LOVE or at best never meet each other, but, whilst they don't all get along with each other, there are actually strong and sometimes touching friendships between them.)

The game so far is essentially Hisao meeting and developing friendships with the potential love interests, depending on the choices you make (if you haven't played a visual novel before (this is my first), it's essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure story with images). The developers have confirmed that there will be sex scenes in the final product, but they have also said that there will be an option not to see them. The fact that they believe it will stand without the sex scenes seems to me to be clear evidence that they're setting out to tell a story, not just to create masturbatory material, and I'd say the fact that I didn't set out in search of masturbatory material and still found myself engrossed is clear evidence that they succeeded. I'm very much enjoying the story they're telling so far.

I suppose what I am saying is 'I misjudged you, Katawa Shoujo team', and also that I highly recommend the first act. You can download it (for Windows, Mac or Linux) here.

My journal, of course, is usually full of rambling adoration of fictional works and characters, but there is occasionally call for a 'Riona rambles adoringly about a public figure' entry, and this is one of those times.

The reason for this is that, oh, dear, I appear to have fallen slightly in love with David Mitchell. I've had a certain fondness for him for a while, but... he is awkward and nervous! He refuses to dance! He owns only two CDs!

Now, David Mitchell is a tricky chap to avoid if you're British and have any interest whatsoever in current comedy, but I can't imagine he's terribly well-known outside these fair isles, so! David Mitchell is an actor and comedian; he plays Mark Corrigan on Peep Show, the subject of my ill-advised fic of a couple of days ago. He appears to be on every single comedy panel show all the time, but I can forgive him because he is wonderful. He is intelligent and eloquent, which is a combination I always find hard to resist, and he has an ability when provoked to launch into spontaneous lengthy rants that rival those of Dr Cox, which is particularly impressive when you realise that Mitchell's speeches aren't scripted ('WHAT SORT OF A MENAGERIE DO YOU IMAGINE I WOULD BE IMAGINING?').

I think part of the reason he appeals to me so much is the fact that he is such a strong character. The public figures for whom I develop a fondness tend to be ones with very clear voices and a strong sense of personality. I love that when David Mitchell claims, on an 'is he telling the truth or not?' panel game, that he wrote to Play School at the age of five to suggest how the BBC should resolve their union conflict, you can think, 'yes, that does sound like something he would do' (and he was telling the truth, by the way). I love that the background on his mobile phone is of his beige living-room carpet. These facts make him sound like the most boring person in the world when typed out, but there is something terribly endearing about them, and he really is a very good comedian.

David Mitchell has a slightly less visible comedy partner, Robert Webb. I am, I have to confess, a tiiiiiny bit of a tinhat when it comes to them. I try so hard to be sane about my real-person pairings, but I have to confess that, should David Mitchell come out, I would be more surprised by his having the confidence than by the sexuality revelation, and my surprise would be little increased should it further transpire that his seven years and counting of being single are due to his repressed and tragically unrequited love for Robert Webb.

I have exactly no evidence for this. This frustrates me. I do not like being an insane tinhatter! It is simply something that I find inexplicably difficult not to believe. Possibly the fact that Mitchell occasionally denies it without accusation (5.10 for talking about Webb on the latter clip, but if you watch from 3.10 there's a lovely bit in which he talks about pretending to be the Doctor as a child) doesn't help.

(retrospective edit: here in the future, I am much more sane and really quite embarrassed about having been so inappropriate here. Sorry, chaps.)

Ahem! My inappropriate speculation aside, I genuinely admire David Mitchell for some of the things he says, which isn't something I feel about many comedians. He doesn't shy away from challenging his fellow comics when they've said something unacceptable:

Angus Deayton: (on Ann Widdecombe) The slight flaw in that programme is the message that if you work really hard you can end up like an insane woman with lopsided tits and a crash-helmet hairdo.
David Mitchell: I would sort of like to say, in defence of Ann Widdecombe, that the thing that's bad about her is all of her horrible views, not the fact that she's ugly. Is that the best thing we can say about this woman who voted against gay rights and horribly wanted to get into power and make us do horrible things, this evil person, and the only thing we can find to say about her is she doesn't look great? It is a bit like insulting Hitler because you don't like his moustache length, isn't it? (Would I Lie to You?, series two, episode one)

In addition to that, one of the things I love most about David Mitchell is that he is intelligent and admired and yet also rather nervous and insecure and socially handicapped. There's something rather reassuring about seeing a successful person on television who has many of my issues with interacting with the world. David Mitchell proves that it is perfectly possible to agonise over one's behaviour and still be awesome.

Jonathan Ross: Your entire record collection consists of the tracks that we put on when we want people to leave at the end of the party. That's all you've got.
David Mitchell: I think basically, deep down, I want myself to leave.
Audience: Awww. (The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2009)

It is seven years since [Mitchell] was in a relationship, he says. "And I think I would like to, really. But I don't know how to go about that. The problem is I hate the sort of dating thing. I just ... I just find it incredibly awkward. So what I've ended up doing is a bit of a disaster, not really embracing that in the normal way but very occasionally, very pissedly getting off with someone. And the next day it's oh no! What have I done? Because, inevitably, it's been someone who, nice though they are, I know I don't want a relationship with. And then I feel bad in case they have a different view. I don't want to be arrogant enough to infer that, but it's a possibility. I just feel bad, I feel why did I do that?" (source)

Oh, my goodness, he is so cute. (And, I notice upon re-reading this interview, so avoidant of gender-specific pronouns. DAVID MITCHELL, YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME FOR MY TINHATTERY IF YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE ME SUBCONSCIOUSLY THINK YOU ARE GAY THROUGH YOUR LANGUAGE USE.) I'd give him a hug if he were within hugging distance. Also, er, if I could be certain that my hugging him wouldn't scare him half to death.

So, erm, yes, I think David Mitchell is pretty awesome. I don't think he's one of the people about whom I will be making a million and three entries, but I thought he deserved at least one. I like you, David Mitchell, and if you would like to continue being on everything on television I would thoroughly approve.

Oh, my goodness, and he can write. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from Tricks of the Mind, but I am fairly sure that I did not expect to open it and suddenly find myself a hundred pages in, having memorised the names of all of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order and enjoyed every moment of it.

Other things I have learnt from this book: a technique for remembering names (I am so bad with names, so this is wonderful), a technique for remembering lists of words or information, a technique for remembering numbers (the example number was 876498474505773498724, and I didn't just have to look that up) and how to apply it to cards in a deck or football scores, quite a bit about hypnosis, a couple of tricks and, as I have said, the fact that Derren Brown can really write. He is humorous and articulate and so intelligent, and much of the book reads like a comfortable chat in his living room, and I just wish it were five times longer. Had I not already fallen for him to a fairly embarrassing degree, his writing style would have won me over.

Oh, dear, I'm such a fangirl.

If I ever meet Derren Brown, I am going to tell him that I believe all books should be written by him. Or possibly I am just going to yelp and run away. We'll have to see how it goes.

To be honest, I always expect a certain gap in quality between a fandom-related book and a good non-fandom one, and I expect my love of the fandom to have to fill in that gap. Tricks of the Mind, I believe, would be a bloody good book even had I never heard of this Derren chap before, and I recommend it enthusiastically to anyone with an interest in the mind, magic, hypnosis, memory improvement, sentences like 'Allow me, my beautiful but ill-informed bitches, to explain', or entertaining and interesting non-fiction in general. I can confidently say that I have never enjoyed a work of non-fiction more.

(The memory techniques are so much fun that I keep wanting to find things to remember. I am not even kidding.)


In other Derren Brown-related news, I have decided that the Jo Whiley segment in the second series of Trick of the Mind (tragically, I have been unable to find it online) may possibly be my favourite clip from anything he's done. The trick itself, although impressive, is not as remarkable as many of the things he does, but that is more than made up for by the fact that Jo slaps him four times (I rewound to rewatch this more times than I'd care to admit), then asks whether she can slap him again and comments that she 'always thought Derren was quite kinky'. And then he asks for a kiss. And it's basically the best thing ever.

Also, the zombie game segment is terrifying, largely because Derren sends a guy to sleep without even being in the room and then gets the guy's friends to help kidnap him. If I ever fall unexpectedly unconscious whilst in your company, I hope you will not help some random man bundle me onto a wheeled bed and take me to a seemingly deserted building. Well, maybe if it's Derren Brown. But I'll be (unconsciously) expecting you at least to ask him some questions.


The fact that so many of you are discovering Derren Brown as I do is making me absurdly happy. It's always nice when I get into a fandom I can easily communicate to you through web clips and the like. SHARE IN MY JOY. MY FEAR AND MY JOY.

Apparently, BBC America have been stripping a lot of things out of their airings of Life on Mars to make room for adverts. I mention this just so any Americans who may be watching it will know. From what I've heard it seems that Gene's characterisation suffers a lot, which makes me sad.

(It seems that the episodes aren't so cut down on BBC America On Demand, though.)

I'm afraid that gayjunglefever just might have succeeded in her evil plot to get me addicted to Life on Mars. Oh dear.

I feel that perhaps I may have been focusing too much on Sam/Gene and, you know, Sam being freakishly adorable in my episode-by-episode posts, and not on the actual stories and the time-travel-or-not-time-travel? thing, which was actually the first aspect of it that I fell in love with. I love it when Sam comes across people or places who were significant in his past, or will be significant in his future. I love it when he hears voices, or when 1973 seems to reflect something that may or may not be happening parallel to it in 2006, or when he realises that something in the past affects the future and maybe - maybe - he can stop it. I love it when he's frustrated and upset and tries to bring something of his home into where he is now. The cases and policing (and Sam/Gene) are all very fun, but the time-travel/insanity aspect is a stroke of absolute genius and makes it so much better than it would be otherwise.

Another thing that I really like is the humour in serious situations, or the humour just before a completely unexpected tragic twist that changes the tone utterly. I'm just very impressed by the ability of the show to completely turn around and startle the watcher, or to change its mood in a second. There were similar moments in Doctor Who, but I think that those in Life on Mars actually have more of an impact. That twist near the end of Episode Four? I never saw it coming, and it brought me straight down from utter gleeful elation to sudden shock.

Why, yes, I am posting this in the slightly desperate hope that other people will be intrigued and watch it.

(Did I mention that Gene is hot? He's got a sort of stealthy hotness that you never see coming until suddenly you're an absolute raving Gene fangirl and can't for the life of you work out why you're finding him attractive.)