Friday 18 June 2010

In praise of Luther...sort of

Just got around to finishing Luther on BBC. It was a fantastic series. Its only slight problem was that it had Idris Elba in. This is not a problem in itself as he is a very good actor. The problem was that anything with him in is inevitably going to remind me of The Wire.

The Wire is unique amongst television dramas in the way that it did not bother conforming to the regular way of TV shows where everything had to be packaged and wound up in a neat one hour package. By doing that The Wire was able to let stories build naturally and not make the kind of shortcuts that shows like Luther, however brilliant they are, have to make.

Still I loved the show and I'm hopeful there will be a second series. As long as his gruesome female sidekick is with him. She delivered the two best lines of dialogue in the series. In one of her occasionally wearisome philosiphical discussions about the nature of love, she says 'The universe is not cruel John, it's just indiffferent.' To a fan of natural selection and the apparent cruelty of nature that is beautiful to me.

Secondly she said that there are three common delusions people suffer from. Which are:
  1. We overstate our good parts (I am English and Catholic so come with self loathing already installed so this one does not count).
  2. We overestimate the ammount of control we have over our lives
  3. We persist in the veiw that our lives will change radically for the better in spite of all available evidence to the contrary.

Which I personally found pretty fucking sobering.

World Cup Woe


England truly have set a new benchmark for averageness at this tournament thus far. It really is mystifying. Anybody who sees Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard play for their club sides knows that these are class players so why is it they cannot do it for England.

This is ordinarily the bit when I offer some kind of bon mot or pithy reason why. But the truth is I don't know the reason why. And judging by the varying bewildered looks on the faces of messrs Capello, Errikson and Maclaren to name but the most recent three it seems the England managers are in the dark as well.

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