In which I watch....stuff [Part Two]

This is the second part of my "hey, let's review stuff I've watched recently" shenanigans. I'll be covering my three "must-watches" of the moment: Being Human, Glee, and Veronica Mars. Inevitably, there will be spoilers. I'm also not sure how much sense this will make if you haven't seen the shows, I'm not great at coherence at the best of times and my head is still full of snot.

I heard about Being Human through my obsessive reading of SFX and cursed my lack of digital TV until they thankfully repeated the first series on BBC Two. Even then I managed to miss a few episodes by forgetting about it. Now it's back, we have a digital TV so I can watch it as it goes out for first time on Sundays on BBC Three. Fan reaction appears to be mixed, with the usual cries of "Not as good as the first series!" but a third series has already been commissioned. It follows the adventures of three housemates: vampire Mitchell, werewolf George and ghost Annie. The first series showed George trying to learn how best to "manage" his condition, Mitchell taking on the local vampire king and Annie discovering the truth about her death and deciding not to move on through The Door. This series has perhaps been a little disjointed: Mitchell's arc about becoming the reluctant leader of the vamps has been the most coherent. George losing Nina because she can't cope with what she's become and then rapidly getting into another relationship and moving in with her has seemed too rushed even for a rebound, whereas Annie's stories have, if anything, been over too fast - I really hoped we'd get to see more of "the Gatekeepers". While I originally watched for the delectable Russell Tovey as much as the story (and George still gets all the best lines), it's been Annie's encounters with doors and her way of coping with becoming "invisible" again that have provided the best drama for me. And the latest episode (the sixth of series two), where she gets to talk to her mother again via a psychic and tell her to get on with her life, was one of the most emotional. Kudos to Jacquetta May, playing Annie's mother, for her heart-felt speech about how it feels to lose a child. I admit the vampire plots tend to interest me least, I could get the same sort of thing reading an account of someone's Vampire: the Requiem game, but "least" certainly doesn't mean "not at all". The explosive end to "Episode 6" is certainly a game-changer and I expect the housemates will discover and take on CENSSA, hopefully rescuing Nina before their attempts to find a cure kill her. Of course, the best shows pull the rug from under our feet and I may be way off base....

Glee was another programme that we heard good things about before it started showing over here and despite being described by some as "High School Musical for adults", we gave it a try. And we fell in love. Ok, it helps that my better half is a sucker for musicals and I like many of the songs featured in the first few episodes and Jayma Mays is awesome in everything she does, but I really do think Glee is worth a try even if the words "high school comedy drama" normally make you retch. Yes, some of the cliches aren't undercut enough and some of the "minority" characters don't get as much screen time as the others (it helps to be black or gay, rather than Asian or disabled) and the plotting is both predictable and American-soap-opera at its most absurd (main character's wife is faking a pregnancy and manages to bribe doctor to falsify an ultrasound for her husband, hmm......) but....there are little wry touches that are laugh-out-loud awesome (such as the leaflets in the guidance counsellors office, including "Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You") and outrageous one-liners courtesy of Sue Sylvester (the marvelous Jane Lynch). I admit it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and only time will tell whether I love it as much all through the first season, but at the moment I'm hooked.

Finally, Veronica Mars is another show I heard great things about but missed entirely as it wasn't shown over here on any station I could get. Sometime before Christmas I discovered it was on every weekday morning (and afternoon) on E4 and it quickly became the fixed point around which the rest of my day was organised. It's about a high school student who works for her private investigator dad and seasons one and two at least fall into a pattern of "case of the week" mixed in with an ongoing story arc in which Veronica finds the true murderer of her best friend Lilly and discovers the culprit behind a horrific bus crash respectively. I started watching mid way through season two and have now nearly looped round, but missed chunks over Christmas and with vivas and things meaning I haven't seen much of season three and still haven't seen the finale of season one either. I'll get there in time. As with Glee, I would have thought the high-school-i-ness of it would put me off as I can hardly relate (my experience of secondary school certainly wasn't like that) and the "outsider" status is often overplayed for me, but Buffy taught me the tropes well and I suppose I learned some tolerance from that. Veronica is smart, sassy but not infallible and ultimately like-able, and the relationship with her father is fun and believable. The cases often throw unexpected twists and the whole thing has that glossy look and feel that makes American dramas so watchable. Enough exposition is given in the voice-over to make catching up with current state of the ongoing investigations easy if you've missed a few episodes, and I'm finding the whole thing very addictive. Soon I'll find out whether it stands up to rewatches as well. If so, I might need to splurge on the DVDs - allegedly region-free despite what the packaging might say (and there's always the computer).

So, that's what I've been watching (beside QI, duh, and far too many cartoons)