an american prisoner of war has been turned.

If you haven't yet watched Homeland, I urge you to do so immediately. I was hooked within about three minutes, and then proceeded to watch all twelve (hour long) episodes in the space of two days. It's that good. It did make me a little bit paranoid though. I keep dreaming that my friends are under cover terrorists and looking at ginger men suspiciously on the metro. I should probably stop that...


Claire Danes is good in everything, and I have sung her praises before, playing an angelic Juliet and a slightly psychotic secret agent are two very different things. This was a difficult role and it would have been easy to tire of the heroine, but she pulled it off with grace and ease. It would have been easy too to oversexualise the character, but she didn't - Carrie emerged a flawed, brilliant woman. She was clingy and confused and feminine - everything intelligent women are sometimes told they must not be. Overall though, she was just very likable. I stayed onside throughout, even when she was at her most ridiculous.

And what can I say about Damian Lewis? I remember seeing him in Stormbreaker when it came out (I would have been about fourteen). He played a Russian baddie, and I'm sure he was supposed to be scary, but really he just oozed sex appeal in his very ginger way (the best if you ask me). In this, he was a very different kind of almost-baddie - a marine who is discovered after eight years of being kidnapped and tortured in Iraq by an Al Qaeda cell. He comes back broken and changed to an unfaithful wife and kids he doesn't recognise.

The series is full of twists and gasps. The cast is solid (and mainly British). My favourite character was Saul-good-guy-Berenson who is brilliant from the start and only gets better as the series progresses. The story is very, very clever and told in a gripping, engaging way in which governments are corrupt and there are two sides to every story and two faces to every character. Now I'm just left wanting more, and searching for something similarly serious and dramatic to fill the void.

And I still really fancy Damian Lewis...

it hurts to look at you.

I'm not all that good at having lots of time off. One of the good things about university is that I don't really have the option of spending all that much time alone. I'm not exactly a social creature by nature, so it's nice that I've had to work on my people skills a bit. The third week of my five week holiday has now begun, and though I've enjoyed it so far, I'm beginning to get a little bit bored, and more than a little bit grumpy. I have no money, no car and no desire to do anything but sit and watch rubbish t.v. all day long.

So that is what I have been doing. Big time.

Firstly, I've got into 'My So-called Life', which is melodramatic and depressing and everything a teenage drama should be. It stars Claire Danes and Jared Leto back when they were completely beautiful. Danes's drawling pearls of wisdom achieve just the right level of melodrama and even at the ripe old age of fourteen, she really was a rather good actress. It's honestly quite enjoyable. If you're in the right mood.




Next up is the almighty 'Friday Night Dinner' which is one of the best things that has been televised in really quite a long time. It has Mark Heap and Tamsin Greig in it, so I was always bound to be a fan, but I'm glad i wasn't disappointed.

I've also just got into series two of Glee, and am as yet undecided over whether it is so shit it's un-shit, or whether it's just shit. Your opinions are welcome, and I think I know on which side most of them will fall, but all I'm saying is that it's fun to find an hour every week to absorb yourself in a world where people express themselves through autotune and swap boyfriends every episode.

So yes, there has been lots of television. I'm not saying I haven't done anything else (just ask Baudelaire), but I am beginning to hear a Claire Danes-esque monologue in my head, so it's possibly time to get out. I went to Merry Hill earlier, but that wasn't exactly any better. Woe is me.