TV-linking, smart thinking

Who ever said familiarity breeds contempt obviously wasn't a fan of tv links.

This week I joined the TV revolution with a glut of TV links-facilitated binge viewing. The entire Nathan Barley back catalogue was devoured greedily, a few Sopranos were knocked back and a couple of dabs of the Twin Peaks series sneaked guiltily before I emerged out the other side bleary, confused and satiated.

Desperate to fill the Duchess-shaped gap left in my life while bird brain was on her revenge trip to London, I had turned to the internet and the on demand magic of TV Links for digital solace. It wasn’t long before I was consumed by the heady whirl of infinite viewing possibilities and power and before I knew it my four days off work had been pissed down the drain as a sea of junk and detritus lapped at the bottom of the couch, threatening to reclaim my prostate corpse at any moment.

Such was the intoxicating effect of TV Links that social interaction largely went out the window once again, and I managed instead to spend some serious me-time with some of the contemporary giants of the small screen. Now, let me dispense with self-indulgent rhetoric and get on with showing you my vision for the country – sorry I mean let me get on with this weeks TV round up.

When Nathan Barley was first on TV I was either too stupid to get it properly or too distracted to focus long enough to realise that this was possibly one of the most flawless and biting comedies to come out of Britain in the last few years. Penned by Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris, Nathan Barley takes few prisoners as it tears a hole in contemporary twenty-something culture and leaves little sacred in its wake. While I thought it was funny at first, I tellingly didn’t make it my absolute number 1 priority to watch every episode until my eyes bled and my brain started cooking in its thick skull with all the extra radiation.

Repent I did however and it was with great joy that I was able to enjoy a good couple of episodes of virgin territory. What makes this series so good, is the recognition of my own life in both the shambolic Dan Ashcroft as well as in parts of the title character and his idiotic mates. I defy anyone who has ever picked up a copy of Vice to claim they are completely spotless with regards to some of the behaviour Brooker and Morris satirise so unrelentingly, and this, perhaps above anything else, is what makes it so bleeding good.

Or maybe I’m just a moron.

Still on TV Links The Soprano’s, as ever, hit the mark (I’ve gushed enough about this programme in recent weeks so will leave it at that) and Twin Peaks was as delightfully unnerving as always, but i don't think i'll give up on the more traditional methods of viewing just yet...

TV links has an annoying tendency to stall and for the audio and vision to go out of sync is not uncommon. Whats more, unless you are in possesion of some top notch computer equipment such as Apple's front row package, watching TV on a laptop is compromised by your position in relation to the screen, making watching with a group unreasonable (unless you know them all very well and don't mind bunching up.) Additionally, if you are watching on your computer it means you can't go on the internet at the same time, a real crux to the media multi-tasking we've become accustomed to.

The old girl is safe yet.