Scrubs- A review

Okay, may be you have had enough of medical shows. ER, House, and (Grrrrrr!!) Grey’s Anatomy, you name it, network TV is swamped with medical shows. Why would one more make any difference in our lives?

Because it is funny, that’s why!

So let us talk about Scrubs, the show that will make you laugh all over. It is a show about doctors and nurses in a wacky, surreal and slapstick environment. There are workplace comedies and then there are workplace comedies. Before the advent of The Office there was Scrubs and believe me, they can go head to head if you compare them. Not that you need to, they are both really entertaining. All I can say is, hilarious!

Scrubs centers around the character of Dr. John “J.D.” Dorian (played by Zach Braff).  He is a new intern at the Sacred Heart hospital along with his friend and roommate Chris Turk. JD is in internal medicine while Turk is in the surgical team- the latter being, in JD’s words, “The Jocks” while the former is the equivalent of the “Chess club”. JD and Turk have a very deep attachment, having been through college and Med school together. The third intern is Elliot Reid on whom JD has a not-so-secret crush. 

JD is your basic wimpy kid who grew up to be a doctor but still remains a wimpy kid at heart. He is easily intimidated but despite his diminutive manner, stands his ground for principle. He is always between a rock and a hard place- between the Chief of Medicine Dr. Bob Kelso and renegade Dr. Perry Cox.  However, JD is not unique in his position, in fact the entire hospital is torn between these two.

Kelso is the administrator, a heartless man who cares more about the patient’s ability to pay rather than their well being. He is very much at home with using his position to intimidate and bully the interns into conforming to the behavior of his liking: taking care of the bottom line. He is abusive, manipulative and sexist- conforming to all possible stereotypes of being the bad guy bureaucrat.

Dr. Cox on the other hand is devoted to his patients. His gruff and apparent indifference towards everyone belies a caring man who has dedicated his entire life for the welfare of the sick. He is very much the antithesis of Kelso but he is not beyond being manipulative. Using dead patients insurance, he would order tests on patients who did not have insurance. However much he may belittle the interns with verbal abuse, he is secretly proud of them. He is your basic macho good guy with a porcupine complex. JD views him with complete admiration and thinks of him as his mentor.

Turk and Elliot, like JD are new interns. Elliot is like JD, she cares about her patients but she is very bad with her bed side manners. She never fit in anywhere in her life so it is little surprise that she finds it difficult to fit into the hospital. She is always stressing about her lack of friends- although she has JD, Turk and Carla to fall back on. Her biggest problem is her foot in the mouth disease. She has the unusual knack of saying absolutely the wrong thing at the wrong place and at the wrong time.

Turk is dating Carla Espinosa, the head nurse. They have a very combustive relationship whereby Turk’s flamboyant personality is equally matched by her no-nonsense attitude. They have been a couple since the beginning of the show.

Then there’s the janitor, who is the bane of existence of JD. They have had an adversarial relationship since the pilot episode which spirals into enmity. The janitor enjoys taunting JD at his most vulnerable moments. JD, having tried to reconcile with the man several times, have given up and just takes his lickings from the man.

All in all the show is very entertaining and though the season has no particular story arc it does unfold in terms of character revelation. The humor lies in the everyday situations combined with the character contrasts and the development of relationships. It is a rather unique approach to comedy and judging by its success, it has fulfilled its aim.

Happy Accidents- A review

It’s nice to see a romantic film and not be nauseated.

You may think that this is just a macho knee jerk response to movies involving emotions but romantic movies on average just make me want to throw up. The sheer dominant paradigm aspects of mating rituals make it predictable and clichéd. And it does not help the fact that your average Mega Studio produced rom-coms are usually written by hacks; the sort of people who think that “It was a dark and stormy night” is cutting edge in terms of opening lines.

So you could have knocked me down with a feather (danger! cliché!) when I came across Happy Accidents, a movie that takes all the hackneyed aspects of the rom-com genre and throws them out of the window. One must give credit to the writer for just being entirely original. I have never been more delighted by a romantic movie since Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind.

Written and directed by Brad Anderson, the movie stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D’Onofrio. It was released at Sundance in January 2000 and since then had great critical success. One may argue that the sheer cerebral nature of the story may have been the biggest obstacle to any commercial success. In addition the movie has a very subtle feel good aspect that would have made any other script cringe worthy but makes itself at home in this one.

Ruby is a “fixer”, i.e. a walking talking magnet of all the losers and emotional vampires and fetishists. A long line of ex boyfriends has made her somewhat cynical of life and she is very much into therapy. Then she meets Sam, a mid western boy from Dubuque, Iowa who seems to be the most normal guy she has ever been with. They hit it off and Ruby decides that she may have been mistaken about love after all.

But from the beginning there are glitches. Sam seems normal enough but he takes an unusual interest in everything, as if he sees them for the first time. Fairly quickly into their relationship, Sam confesses to Ruby that he’s from the future, in particular, from 2470. He is from Dubuque, Iowa on the Atlantic coast- apparently an ice age had made the ocean move far into the heartland. His parents have been renegades, old fashioned people who do not conform to the technological society’s norms. After losing his family, Sam was on the verge of suicide when a picture of Ruby in an old curiosity shop made him think twice. He traveled back in time to find her.

So, a story of a pair of neurotic lovers with a bit of time traveling thrown in- is that enough to hold my attention? But what really carries the movie is not a gimmicky script- you cannot remember any zinger of a one liner. It is a story of love- pure and simple. Two lost souls find each other and hold on to each other for dear life as the world continues to bask in condescending indifference towards them.

There is an aspect of time flowing backwards from Sam’s perspective: he tends to see the coffee leaping back on the pot, the eggs becoming unbroken, etc. But is he lying? Is he just delusional and the fact that his sister’s death may have pushed him off the edge? Is he truly who he say he is?

Yes, these questions will bug you all throughout the movie. But what is more important is for you to ask: will they make it? These two seemingly oddballs have discovered what it truly means to be in love with each other and the madness of their relationship and the madness of the world around them and the madness of each other just feeds off on your emotional response to the story.

I like smart alecks and I like banter. But it was humbling for me to see that pure feeling, tenderness and love could also be heartwarming. I think everyone should go see this  movie- it is that good.

No post.

I am really sick today. So I cannot write any reviews. Hopefully tomorrow would be better.

Dirk Gently on BBC 4: A Review

From finding a cat to stumbling onto a murder and then to fly off to time traveling- boy, this detective has his hands full.

Okay, it's not perfect. But then again, Douglas Adams would be thrilled that one of his more difficult novels have been adapted for TV.

Those of you who are big fans of DNA's (that's Douglas Noel Adams for you, and yes, he was born in Cambridge in 1952. Coincidence? I think not!) work outside the Hitchhiker's Guide series, are familiar with the Dirk Gently novels. It features (who else?) Dirk Gently- a modern day gumshoe who runs a detective agency. However this is pulp fiction with a twist: this is no ordinary enterprise in the private eye business. It is a holistic detective agency.

So it was with quite pleasurable surprise that I discovered that BBC has recently aired a dramatization of one of the Dirk Gently novels. It is difficult to describe my feelings as a DNA purist. I'll let you in on a secret: I still think that the radio plays of Hitchhiker's Guide were the best, it all went downhill form there!

It is hard to pin down DNA's strengths as a writer. For one thing, he was enormously versatile in writing fantasy and science fiction. Let us not forget that he cut his teeth as writer working on Doctor Who scripts. One of the most famous Doctor Who episodes, Shada, was written by him. It was never aired but it did find its way to be adapted by the radio series of Doctor Who. However, DNA branched out to writing Sci-Fi, fantasy and even straight laced non-fiction about ecology. So his repertoire of writing is vast.

However, one thing that stands out in DNA's fiction is the essence of humor. It is really funny. It will make you laugh. Not only will it make you laugh but it will do so every other line. DNA is one of those rare writers who oozes humor and it does not feel like too much. We want more.

Yeah, you may say I am a DNA junkie!

But the crucial element of his humor is that it is culturally and linguistically contextual. Take the whole paragraph on Vogon poetry, for example or that of babel fish: how would you translate that into screen and be able to demonstrate how funny both of these situations were? Or to cite a non-Hitchhiker's example, how do you convey the essence of the opening line of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul: “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'.”

Nevertheless it is rather laudable that BBC has not forgotten one its finest writers and is trying to bring Dirk Gently into the mainstream. The entire story – although devoid of the DNA touch was simplified a little and not all the zany elements were included.

However, in its defense, Dirk Gently is wacky and funny, just like the way Douglas Adams would have preferred. It was a a very good job and I think that anyone who is not familiar with the works of DNA, this would be a nice introduction. If it gets the audience to read his works, the better!

Dirk Gently was aired on BBC 4 on December 16, 2010.

Tim Harford's Trust Me, I'm an Economist Part 4: Your Future

Get your crystal balls out folks! Tim Harford is going to talk about applying economics in being able to look into the future. He is going to talk about irrational decision making that affects your future and how the experts are almost never the best forecasters and many more. Well, better an economist than some scary gypsy woman in a dark room any day.

In this fourth and last episode of Trust Me, I'm an Economist Harford focuses on how our long term decision making can be improved with the help of tools from economics. But first of all, he wants to talk about why you make the irrational and wrong decision about the future.

The reason people make wrong decisions is because of fear of risk. Because the future is unknown, it is difficult to predict and is therefore risky. However, people's take on the degree of risk that future holds is grossly overrated. Our fear of the unknown and the unpredictable makes us vulnerable and easy prey for experts and companies who deal in the business of uncertainty.

Take product insurance for example. Harford pays a visit to a cell phone store where nearly all of the phones come with an added package of insurance. If you are scared out of your pants about losing your new smart phone, then you are very likely to have it insured- often at a very high premium. However, if you asses the risk yourself in an objective fashion, you would find that it is very unlikely that you are going to lose your phone- unless you are the very careless type. Yet, exploiting your fear of the future, the cell phone company may fleece you even further.

This is true for nearly all of our durable goods purchases but it is also true about our big life decisions. It is necessary for all of us to save for the future and insure such things as life and major properties. However, dealing with retirement issues bring us to a very important point. Do we trust the experts who tell us where to put our money?

It turns out that the experts who are paid to predict the future of markets are no better at it compared to random guesses. Financial markets are what the economists call “efficient” markets: it adjusts very quickly to new information. So such things as hot tips or expert opinions on investment opportunities are useless. Harford points out that finding a good stock to invest in is like looking for the shortest queue in the supermarket- as soon as someone spots one, every one moves to it, making the relatively shorter queue no longer short. Similarly, as soon as a stock becomes a good investment opportunity, the market will adjust to the information very quickly- making the opportunity obsolete.

However, experts would like you believe that they can predict the future-but often it is in their interest to be wrong about it as well. In a bull market that is overheating, an expert who predicts a crash would hounded out of the market because he makes investors nervous. So there is a lot of incentives for an expert to keep predicting a rise in the market even though it could be a bubble. In the end, the average investor will lose out but the expert would pocket his cash. Harford strongly cautions against trusting expert opinions- particularly those that are overtly optimistic.

Harford goes on to examine the business of predictions at the horse racing circuit. Here he explores a particular idea about forecasting: the wisdom of the crowds. We see that a large body of people making predictions and putting their money on it often makes better forecasting results than random picks or expert advice. Often, the majority opinion about the future is the right opinion!

I think over all this has been one of the most enjoyable TV shows I have seen. Of course I am biased because the subject matter, economics, is what I am primarily interested in. But Tim Harford, with his easy going style, sense of humor and depth of knowledge in economic analysis has proved himself to be a great ambassador of the discipline to the mass audience. Not to mention the fact that venturing economics into hitherto unexplored fields is precisely what we should be doing and what would bring new popular interest in the subject.

I have a new hero: his name is Tim Harford and he's an economist!

Tim Harford's Trust Me, I'm an Economist Part 3: Work

How do you get ahead at work? How would you be able to cash in on your talent and reach the optimum level fulfillment in your professional life? But most importantly, how would you be able to stay ahead of your slouching colleagues and beat your boss in his own game?

Fear not, the answer is here. Tim Harford has the key to life at he workplace and he will show you the economic analysis that would pave a pathway to your success. In the third episode of Trust Me. I'm an Economist, Harford focuses on the workplace and how to succeed there with the help of economics.

One of the basic principles of the workplace is that everyone wants to be at the top and there are only a finite number of top positions. Workers compete among themselves and are encouraged by the boss to do so because they all want to be in his shoes one day. All this competition performance is good for the company because that gives them maximum yield in employee productivity. But is that an optimum level of welfare for the workers?

How do you demonstrate your worth at the workplace? How would your boss know how valuable you are as an employee? The main problem involving those questions concerns information. Your biss simply does not have enough information about you or your colleagues to make an optimal evaluation about you.

Using the second-hand car market, Harford illustrates the problem that is known as information asymmetry. How do you know that a used car is either a “peach” or a “lemon”? The dealer knows but he won't share that information with you. Because of you lack of information and his having that information, the dealer therefore has an advantage over you. However, because you don't know whether the car is a lemon or not, you may choose to walk away from the deal, leaving the seller with the problem of unsold goods.

It's all down to what economists call “signaling”. Employers suffer from information asymmetry and you hold the information. What you can do to rectify the situation is to signal to the employer your seriousness in achieving things. You can tackle academically challenging subjects like philosophy and mathematics and prove to the employer that you have genuine analytical skills. Or you can coach a team and prove your mettle fro team work. Either way you can demonstrate to an employer that since you have managed to be productive on your own, you can be equally or more productive in the workplace given the right incentives.

Often employers look for inquisitive, confident and articulate employees and they are more than willing to help them acquire skills. What they are interested is not what you learned at school but what you proved at school. This is the best of signaling: showing the employer the proof of your worth.

How would you measure performance in a world of information asymmetry? How would you pay the right person person the right kind of incentive to maximize productivity? What, essentially must be the rewards for performance?

There can be the flip side of the performance pay: the wrong person can get the rewards. Witness the corporate scandals on the early 2000s when Enron executives lied about how well the company was doing. They did so because they were rewarded on the basis of the increase in stock prices- the better the company looked on paper, the better their reward. No wonder they cooked the books!

But ultimately, success in work would always depend on how much you like what you do. Nothing would be a good enough substitute for passion as a recipe for for success. The key is to love what you do.

Tim Harford's Trust Me, I'm an Economist Part 2: Shopping

Yes we have seen how economics can be a useful tool in the quest for nookie. Now let us see how it helps us in our shopping.

Now you would think that a topic like shopping fits in right with our idea of economics. Economics deals with money, right? So exchange of money for goods would be the perfect area to tell us about how economic analysis works. Stuff we get at the store and the money we pay for it, economics in a nutshell.

Or so you would think. But you are in the company of Tim Harford, one of the most celebrated economists in the world and he is hear to show you that economics can be used for practically any aspects of life. Harford asserts that the main purpose of economics is to not to look at the GDP or inflation and what not, but to study behavior, both individual and collective.

In the second episode of Trust Me, I'm an Economist, Harford takes on the idea of how to deal with shopping. Or in other words, how do big business ends up gouging the last bit of cash from your pocket and how you, the average consumer, enable them to do so.

So, this guy is just a glorified shopping consultant, you say. All he's telling me is how spend my money. Huh! I can do a better job than he can, I don't have to pay him to tell me anything!

Yes, but if I may suggest some patience? In dealing with consumer behavior and how big business succeeds in making them pay top dollars for their services, Harford poses a very interesting question: how do you get turkeys to vote for Christmas?

This is what he calls the “self incriminating” aspect of consumer behavior. How does big business gets the maximum amount of cash out of your pocket? The answer is simple: you tell them how by buying their product!

The first thing to do, Harford says, is to establish principles. There is a distinction between price of something and it's value. And the way a large corporation would like to ascertain how much value you place on something so that they can extract maximum price from you is you behavior. You tell them exactly what they want to know.

Just a simple trip to your local yuppie coffee shop demonstrates this principle. You could get a simple cup of coffee for $1.70. But if you choose a hot chocolate with marshmallows and cinnamon sprinkling, that might set you back a good five dollars plus tax. And the coffee shop loves a customer like that, not because they are willing to pay top dollar but because they reveal so much information about their preferences to the seller. They are going to use this information about your behavior to try and maximize their profit out of you. They will also cater to the guy who wants a simple cup of coffee.

But the chocolate drinker with all the frills is a very distinct type to consumer compared to the simple coffee drinker. Being able to charge both of them different prices is one of the strategies of profit maximization. This strategy is called price discrimination or, as Harford calls it price targeting.

A curious aspect of the electronic goods market seems to be the mass market paradox. In order for a product to be more appealing to a wider audience, companies often downgrade their products. This phenomenon is called “crippleware”. For example, Intel took their premium chip and disabled some parts of it to sell at a lower price. The low quality product cost more to produce but sold at a fraction of the original price.

You can buy a Sony mp3 player or an iPod but the heavy users of these products will tell you that the batteries cost the earth. Printers are cheap but the ink cartridges are very expensive, similar to cheap razors and expensive blades. Users to value the product most would pay more to maintain it. This is called quantity discrimination.

Well, looks like odds are stacked against the average consumer. So how to fight back? Be aware of how you are signaling to the seller with your behavior. Make sure that you are aware of what you are getting in exchange is worth the value. And most importantly, it would not hurt to go for the cheaper prices!

But then again, some prices are worth paying.

Tim Harford's Trust Me, I'm an Economist Part 1: Love

Do you want to find love?

Get ahead at work?

Take on and succeed against big business?

Secure your future?

If you have said “yes” to any of the questions above, then what you need is : Economics!

Now, don't give me that look. Stranger things have happened, but turning to economics to solve any problems in life may just be the most rational thing you will ever do.

Tim Harford, the part time agony uncle of the Financial Times and full time economist, would like to show you a new way. With the help of economics, Tim would help you to find love, take on big business, get ahead at work and look into your future, sans a crystal ball- all with the tools of analyses available from economics.

Convinced yet? Hmm, I thought so. No wonder the show is called Trust Me, I'm an Economist.

Well, it may sound gimmicky, but it's all true. Harford is a very well respected economist. He has worked for the World Bank and the International Finance Corp, writes the “Dear Economist” column at the Financial Times, hosts the BBC Radio 4 program More or Less and is the author of such international bestsellers such as The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life.

And now he is in your TV screen, talking about your everyday decision making viewed from the angle of economic analysis. Would you bite?

Well let's have a look shall we? How would Tim Harford help you find love? Simple. He will train you in a concept called game theory. It is the field of study where strategies and payoffs in competitive atmospheres are the primary focus. Every thing in life can be viewed as a game with the goals as highest payoffs and the strategies as how to get there.

For example, you can play the game of finding love. The goal is to end up with a romantic partner and the strategies involved would be how to achieve such an outcome. Tim takes us to the world of speed dating which is the one place where information is truly random, hence rational predictions are possible. What are your strategies about proving to a potential partner that you are a reliable and trustworthy person and not just playing the field?

Then we go to a couple buying an engagement ring- how much is it worth? How would a couple entering marriage view it: in terms of the commitment that they expect form the other or in terms of the commitment and effort that they bring to the table? How much is marriage worth? Unromantic as it may sound, is it not really like a business merger?

How would a couple, after some time of stable relationship show their commitment? Would the man sell his bachelor pad and move in with the woman?If he does not, then may be he's not entirely committed! If she asks him to sell his flat, would he agree to it just to show how much he is in love with her? Would he come up with a counter offer: let both of us sell our places and move into somewhere bigger and better. If this was a poker game, you would call it raising the stakes.

Do you want high or low quality children? To answer that question, consider this: how much would you be able to afford to spend per child? A perfect illustration is the musical instrument. If you have four of five children, you may be able to buy them cheap instruments like the flute. If you have three, then you may be able to invest in guitars. With two, you can buy violins and cellos. And with only one child, you can invest in a grand piano.

These are just some of the areas of romantic relationships and family dynamics you can explore with economics. With Tim Harford as the host, there is always an interesting angle to the most mundane of human events. There is never a boring moment!

Next time, I shall talk about how Tim can help you turn the table on big business by using the same strategies they use to gouge cash off your pockets.

Trust me I'm an Economist is available on DVD.

Forbrydelsen: The Killing- A review

So Auntie goes for fishing in the continent.

Ever since I had the pleasure of watching Smilla's Sense of Snow I have been a fan of the Nordic noir genre. They do make good TV and are cracking good at makings suspenseful crime dramas. So much so that even BBC has decided that they want a share of the pie. The recent adaptations of Henning Mankel's Wallander novels are a good example. (More on that series on a later post.)

But sometimes it just pays to show the original with subtitles instead of remaking the whole show. That is exactly what BBC4 is doing. They are showing Forbrydelsen, renamed The Killing. It is a twenty-part Danish drama produced by Denmarks Radio. The show is written by the Danish Crime writer Søren Sveistrup and has a stellar Danish cast.

The concept of the show is not unlike that of 24. However, instead of focusing on 24 hours of a day, each episode focuses on each day of the investigation. It is a tightly knit story with many different plot lines running through, all centered on the main event: the brutal rape and murder of a young girl.

Detective Sarah Lund of the Copenhagen is looking forward to her last day on the job. She is moving to Sweden with her boyfriend and hopes to take up a post at Stockholm PD. All she wants to do is pack up all her stuff from her office, hand it over to the next guy and take off to her going away party. She is excited about spending more time with her beau and her son.

A call comes in about clothing remains found near a forest. The Superintendent asks Lund to go along with Detective Jan Myers, her replacement, to show him the ropes. They find torn clothings belonging to a young woman and a video card. Suspecting that a john had abandoned a prostitute at this remote area, Myers feels a bit indignant and wants to pay a visit to the man whose name was on the card.

While visiting Theiss Larsen's family, they discover that he has a nineteen year old daughter. Lund and Myers realize that she may have been carrying her father's video card and may have been a victim of violence. They undertake a prolonged search and soon discovers that near the forest is a waterway. A car is found submerged under water and inside the boot they find the body of Nanna Larsen, the young girl.

The Superintendent decides to give Lund the job of investigating the murder. She protests but after looking at the forensic report and seeing how the girl was raped and then murdered, decides to stay and finish the job.

While all of this is going on, the Copenhagen City Hall politics is heating up. The mayor is facing a robust challenge from a young and coming politician- Troels Hartmann. However, to bring a twist in the tale, the car where Nanna's body was found was linked to the Hartmann campaign. Hartmann is facing political disaster because of this link but he is compassionate enough to cancel a debate and not talk to the press at the request of Lund. Back room political deals are going on and he faces delicate political negotiations but is constantly hampered by the fact that the Mayor, who has a mole in his office, seems to be one step ahead of him all the time.

And then there is Nanna's family. Theiss is a loving father and husband and Pernille is a devoted mother and wife. Nanna was their eldest and they have two little boys. They run a moving business and as employers they are very considerate. A nicer family you will not find and to have this tragedy befall them is really a testament to how basically unfair life is.

The pace of the show is quite fast, considering that all the 20 episodes are focused on one single murder investigation. It helps that each episode is based on each day of the investigation and focuses the investigation on a different suspect so you are always left guessing and so the storyline never slacks off. There is a lot of character development within the show so those who are literary inclined would find it an interesting watch. For those who are fans of noir fiction, this is a good show to watch because the characters and the storyline are so compelling as are the numerous subplots that criss cross the show.

One simple description of the show could be that it builds tension. It builds it over time and takes a lot of care in doing so. It is very well written and well done in terms of directing. The performances of the actors are simply superb and dramatically intense.

I am looking forward to seeing how the show ends.

The Killing is on BBC4 on Wednesdays at 10.30 pm and Saturdays at 9 pm.

Fast and Loose- A BBC Comedy

Well, Outnumbered and Mock the Week was not enough, Auntie (the BBC, that is) feels that Hugh Dennis deserves his own show. So we have, ladies and gentlemen, the next generation of Whose Line type. It is called Fast and Loose and it is hosted by none other than the aforementioned star.

I must say that my first encounter with Hugh Dennis was not on television. I heard him before I saw him on screen. With his comedy partner Steve Punt, he hosts The Now Show on BBC Radio 4- a program devoted to topical comedy. If you want a bellyfull of laugh and memorable jokes, you should listen to this program, it is superbly done.

Although he has been a regular on TV as one of the team leaders in Mock the Week and the dad character in Outnumbered, this time Dennis has his own panel game show. Fast and Loose debuted on BBC Two on January 14^th. One thing you noticed straight away was how effortlessly Dennis stepped into the role of the host. He was entertaining and funny and instead of making a huge song and dance about it, he quickly introduced the participants who were all comedians.

A word about the format of the show. As stated earlier, it is based on Whose Line but it does have its originality. Six comedians are introduced and they take their seats on the stage. Hugh then gives them silly things to do and funny things to say. They usually make the audience laugh. One of the good things about this show is the focus on one liners and character performances. That is why comedians are the best performers of this game: no one can take a character and run with it like a stand up comedian.

The regulars on the show include such contemporary comedy stars as Laura Solon, Pippa Evans, Greg Davies. Justin Edwards and Ruth Bratt. Often, David Armand appears as a guest star to do interpretive dance of a popular song- which the performers have to guess. Armand's performance is truly hilarious- in re the choice of the song sand the way he performs them. I guarantee it will leave you hwoling with laughter.

I really hope that Fast and Loose would be a success in terms of the ratings because I am hoping that BBC commissions another season. It is good to see Hugh Dennis exploring other venues of his talent within the realms of comedy.

Fast and Loose is on BBC Two on Wednesdays at 10 pm BST.

It's a Bird- A review

You can accuse me of going on a Nietzschean complex and you may have a fair point. For a guy who prefers not to read superhero comics, two articles about one superhero might be a little too much. But then again, I am talking not about the traditional narrative of this comics universe or that. I am however, interested in writers who take a different take on the story.

Now when you come across the title It's a Bird the first thing you are aware of is alarm bells going off at the back of your head. This may be something to so with Superman, you think to yourself. Who needs another take on the Man of Steel? Aren't there enough hack writers employed by DC to write one more set of predictable stories?

Well this one is different. Firstly, this is not about Superman but about the man behind the story. Published in 2004 by Vertigo, It's a Bird is written by Steven T Steagle as an autobiographical approach to telling the story behind the comic book. It is about a writer who is given the job of writing Superman. He has to come up with a whole new approach to it. For a comic book writer he does have a distinctive approach towards Superman but he doubts if anyone would be interested in it: he hates the character and the comics that comes with it.

Now you might say that it's a job, get on with it; plenty of people wake up every morning and go to a job they hate, why should you be any different? Most of the time you'd be right but we are talking about a writer who cares about his what he does. He wants to do a good job because in his soul he knows he is not a hack.

Why does he not like Superman? His main objection to him is the idea that Superman is a character whose contradictions are irreconcilable. He is a protector of the people but what Steagle sees in him is more of a symbol of fascism. Superman, while serving as a protector of the people also seeks to impose on them a lifestyle more suited to the powers that be. He seeks not to change the status quo because he is in fact part of it. With Superman at its beck and call, what State would not feel emboldened in extending its role in the lives of people at the expense of their liberties?

In fact to Steagle, Superman appears as symptom of infantalization of ordinary human institutions. In an ordinary world justice is to be achieved at the expense of power siince the exercise of the latter causes the formers demise. This is usually done through collective demands of the people. The Dieux Ex Machina approach to justice that Superman delivers is not some thing any one who had any sense of social responsibility would appreciate. You cannot render justice from up high while you hold all the power as well- a critical flaw in the character of Superman.

There are also personal considerations. Years ago, when he and his brother were little, their parents discovered that his grandmother had Huntington's Disease. This had haunted him all his life because he heard his parents say that had they known earlier, they would not have had children. He shares the sentiment and is unwilling to engage in a conversation with his girlfriend about it. They even go the point of breaking up but he is adamant about it.

He has a mortal dread about the effect Huntington's will have on him- he does not want to die like his grandmother or his aunt. His aunt has been moved permanently to a hospice, her brain reduced to pulp by the disease. One look and he knows what is in store for him in the future.

So how does he reconcile dealing with a potential debilitating disease and writing about a man who is the paragon of physical perfection?

How would he deal with the various crises in his life? His girlfriend has left him, his father is missing, his agent wants him to accept a job that he would very much like to pass on. And above all, he has not resolved the issue between him and Superman.

What makes the comic so moving and personal is the way Steagle's narrative flows between his inner monologue and the out side world. What makes it interesting is the evident paradox: when things are going well for him he is experiencing an emotional meltdown. And yet when his life starts snowballing into one disaster after another, he discovers his true relationship with Superman.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. A PBS NOVA Special

How would you feel if creatures no more than 2% away from chimpanzee DNA were in charge of your children's education?

So, a group of primates decide to play havoc with the biology curriculum. They decide to promote an unprovable and more importantly, untestable, idea and equate it with a perfectly working existing model.

If you have not been crawling under a rock for the last few years, this story may already be familiar to you. We have to move our attention to small town America, particularly, Dover Pennsylvania. As Stephen King rightly points out, if you want a horror show, skip the urban areas and go to a cornfield. No wonder certain ursine femme politicos are so fond of these nooks and crannies of “real America”. As The Hitch once said, all politics is yokel.

Some trolls decided that they had had enough of living under the bridge (or in some cases, golf courses) and decided to join the local school board. Once in it, they were astonished to find that the public school curriculum was based on teachings of modern science. (Shocked! Shocked I say! ). Being faithful (pun intended!) thumpers of a particular book they decided to bring their bearded-old-man-in- the-sky back to the classroom.

They began by putting pressure on the biology teachers not to teach the Theory of Evolution. They even went to the extent of not approving the funding for high school text books because the books were modeled on teaching the theory. Failing that they decided to look around for other avenues of disruptions.

Soon opportunity came knocking in the guise of the Discovery Institute. This collection of odious nincompoops, erroneously called a think tank, promotes the idea of intelligent design(ID). ID states that life, the Universe and Everything could not have formed ex nihilo. To them, life on Earth shows distinct sings of being designed and therefore there must be some intelligent designer who had created all this we see around us. (some one needs to learn how to multiply seven by six!).

What the Discovery Institute does is not waste their time on such tedious and boring tasks like doing research and testing their theory. They do not need evidence! Evidence is for suckers! They would rather spend their valuable time promoting the idea of teaching ID in schools. So this is quite a novel idea: by-pass the entire scientific process and go straight to the curriculum. Brilliant!

So one of the books published by this think tank is called Pandas and People which was promoted by the aforementioned trolls of the board. Failing to secure funding for the books, they raised money in their churches to pay for them and send them to the public schools.

The science teachers were livid! They refused point blank to teach nonsense in their classroom. So a member of the board went to each classroom to read out a notice about ID as an alternative to Evolution.

Some of the parents sued the school for violating the separation of Church and State. The case went to Federal Court and landed on the courtroom of Judge John Jones. (Can we call him 3J?). The parents were represented by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Pepper Hamilton LLP. The School Board was represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a hub of politically motivated religious lawyers who want to promote religion in the public square. The horns were locked.

The witnesses for the plaintiffs included many top academic biologists including the sublime Dr. Kenneth Miller of Brown University. They spoke about the nature of Science and what science is and what it isn't. Evolution falls on the former category and Id on the latter.

The witnesses on the side of the defense were proponents of irreducible complexity- a major argument in favor of ID. That was the only argument that they offered in favor of their position. When their star witness, Michael Behe took the stand, he was humiliated by Eric Rothschild, counsel for the plaintiffs.

Every time Behe made an assertion, Rothschild would put piles of books refuting his position in front of him. The iple of books and journals grew so tall that t they hid his features from the court!

Apart from ruling on the violation of Church and State argument, Judge Jones was in a unique position to rule on whether ID was science or not. His response? ID was, according to his verdict, “Breathtaking inanity”! Way to go, Your Honor!

Judgment Day is available on the PBS NOVA website.

Gavin and Stacey: BBC Comedy

What happens when a girl from Wales hooks up with a boy from Essex? Cracking comedy with cultural differences, that's what!

Gavin and Stacey is less of a relationship comedy and more about how people from different backgrounds have to make allowances because of love. It is also quite the social commentary about the way culture and identity travels across county lines all the way to border. Mostly, it is about two people being in love and the people around them having to make adjustments to their prejudices because of that.

Written by James Corden and Ruth Jones, it is a 2007 BBC comedy which became the most nominated comedy show at the British Comedy Awards of that year. Corden and Jones also star in the show as the best friends of Gavin and Stacey

Gavin (Matthew Horn) works as a computer expert for a local company in Essex. Stacey (Joanna Page) works in accounts for a local company in Barry, Wales. They met over the phone because their employers do business together. Business conversations had turned into flirtations and that turned into a full length long distance relationship- without having met each other.

After six months of exchanging heart to heart conversations, Gavin and Stacey decide to meet at a neutral venue. Barry is on the west coast of Britain, and Essex is on the East coast of England, so these two lovebirds can claim to have the entire island (not to mention two countries) separating them. So they decide on a neutral venue, halfway between: London.

Just to be on the safe side, they each bring their best friends with them. Gavin brings Smithy, a burly builder who is very fond of beer (well who isn't?). Stacey brings her friend Vanessa, a woman who apparently has seen it all and is subsequently jaded about men.

Hilarity ensues as Stacey's uncle Brian (pronounced “Brin”) (Rob Brydon)equips her with a rape alarm for protection. The Welsh distrust of the English is not going away very soon as is the English misconception about the Welsh. But I'll tell you this for starters, other people's prejudices are hilarious to watch!

Gavin and Stacey hit it off and after a coupe of false starts, so do Smithy and 'Nessa. An awkward situation happens when the four of them have to share one room- but it is soon resolved. One can understand that being a best friend is about being able to ignore the fact that your friend is having very noisy sex four feet away. It does not hurt if you're doing the same as well.

As far as relationship comedies go, the comedy is centered more around the people in the lives of the two protagonists. Stacey's family is rather insular and very overprotective of her- not surprising since her father had passed away recently. Gavin's mother Pamela (Allison Steadman) is a typical Essex girl (presumably retired) who is very much your poor man's Hyacinth Bucket. Just imagine what could happen when these two clans meet. Here's a clue, I'm still laughing.

If you are looking for a non-formulaic comedy show that would actually make you laugh, you may want to give this one a try.