DVD MARATHONS (THE HBO BLOOD LINE)
First published in the Canberra Times, 19 September 2006


Last weekend there a family of four, including two boys aged 6 and 8, spent 50 hours watching television as an exhibit in a museum in Melbourne to mark 50 years of Australian television. They were only allowed to leave their couches for ablutions and were otherwise visible to the public, through a glass window, the whole time. It's a wonder the 6 year old wasn't voted out of the family, just for added authenticity.

There have been relatively few TV shows screened over the past 50 years which, laid end to end, would keep me trying to watch TV for 50 hours, but thankfully, the age of the DVD boxed set has arrived. The packaging isn't even confined to boxes any more, now they're more like teeny designer cupboards you can open and escape through the back of into a world of quality TV.

Stock in some comfort food, and put some blankets over the windows. I know the weather's getting better but sometimes, you just have to give it up to the tube and sit down for a marathon. Here's just some possibilities to nurture folk fleeing from dross like "The Great Weight Debate", and the loathsome frolics of the current affairs shows.

THE HBO BLOODLINE

The American cable network HBO (Home Box Office) is the mother of all mini series and brilliant TV series. And I'm not even going into Entourage, Rome, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under; all great marathon viewing from HBO.

Deadwood
An imagining of the first settlement of the real wild west town of Deadwood, with all the usual elements you might expect - saloons, gunslingers, sex workers, brutal local politics, murder, race relations and drug running (opium). But to say that Deadwood is like a conventional western series is like comparing a brush stroke to a Carravaggio. Everything about this series is mesmerising - the brilliant acting, the real tonnes of mud they dumped on the real town they built, the baroque, almost Shakespearean language invented to re-create the talk of the time, mixed with the most confronting modern obscenities to carry the impact of a real "frontierland". Time to wash Doris Day as Calamity Jane right out of your hair.

Arrested Development
Consistently laugh-out-loud satire of a dysfunctional American family survives on its brilliant characters, critical success and its DVD sales. Mystifyingly, it skirts cancellation every season because of low ratings. It stars Jason Bateman, Portia di Rossi, and quite marvellously, Henry Winkler (the ex-Fonz) as a lawyer who is neither learned, nor a friend, and has some great cameo work by a deliberately unsteady Liza Minnelli.

The Wire
Not to be confused with Wire In the Blood, the Wire is the best cop series, ever. It's set in Baltimore, a city smaller than Adelaide with a huge drug problem and up to 300 murders a year. The Wire is written by a team of people including several successful crime fiction writers including George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane, but there's a realism in every scene. So far it's covered the waterfront, the apprenticeship of baby dealers, drugs as a corporate structure, and police and political corruption and incompetence and the neglect of the public schools system. If it sounds dull it isn't: it's mostly street level interraction of baddies and goodies, and all the people, and ways and means in between. It took me two episodes wondering what all the fuss was, then I suddenly cared so much about every character, I went to Amazon.com and ordered every episode available in the known universe.


HELEN MIRREN EXTRAVAGANZA
All the Prime Suspect detective series episodes with Miss Mirren as Jane Tennison, plus Elizabeth 1, and when available, the Queen.


NOSTALGIA

Edwardian Package
A most satisfactory evening can be had by taking home from the rental shop a customised Edwardian package, of say, Robert Altman's Gosford Park (also a Mirren Extravaganza option), the British Channel 4 series the Edwardian Country House, and even Upstairs Downstairs if there are enough hours in the day.


The West Wing

Remember when we thought government could be about shining ideals, and smart people with even smarter repartee? Remember when we thought getting into power, or trying to get into power, might be about the hard-thought, genuinely held views of attractive, dynamic folk? And will Josh and Donna get it on in the last series?


COMEDY

Blackbooks
A hilarious series set in a bookshop run by a smoking, misanthropic, shambolic and disturbingly attractive drunk, played by Irish comedian and writer Dylan Moran, assisted by comedian Bill Bailey, who does look like a big-boned Jesus, and the intriguingly amusing Tamsin Grieg. Each actor throws themselves over the top, and nobody wants them to come back.


Kath and Kim
Thank Gina Riley and Jane Turner for not giving up when the original bunch of ABC TV folk were not loving Kath and Kim sick. They pressed on to write, produce and perform in something not only brilliant, but foxy.


Did I leave out your favourite? The Office? Sex in the City? Vicar of Dibley? I'll meet you on the couch to fight over the remote. BYO Tim Tams.