Favourite Jonny Cash Song

Over on the Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight asks "What is your favorite song by Johnny Cash?" He goes for "Jackson". My choice might seem a little eccentric, but it is his cover version of the Hank William's classic "I Saw the Light":



This comes from the 1974 episode of Columbo starring Johnny Cash as Tommy Brown (season 3, episode 7, "Swan Song"). I watched this episode when the BBC we re-showing the entirety of Columbo in he late 1980s and it made a massive impression on me, introducing me to Johnny Cash for the first time and developing my love for the Columbo TV series.

Life on Mars American Style: Actually not that bad

After the qualms expressed here several months ago (Life on Mars American Style), after looking at the earlier (dreadful) trailer, my hopes were not high when the first episode of the new, American version of Life on Mars aired on the ABC network last night. That earlier trailer looked like a joke, a "Comic Strip Presents" style parody of an attempt to Americanize a superb British series. I was ready to watch the total fiasco of a series that that trailer suggested would be on offer. And yet the reports were already coming in, before the first episode aired last night, that they might have been able to pull off the impossible, and turn it into something decent. Ten minutes in, and most of my worries were laid to rest. As the American Sam Tyler got hit by a car in 2008, waking up in the New York of 1973, it was already clear that the programme itself was not going to be a car crash that had earlier been threatened. It looked like it might actually be quite good.

The move from LA of 1972 (original pilot) to New York of 1973 (the episode that aired last night) was a masterstroke, not least because of the powerful moment when Sam Tyler gets up to see the twin towers still standing in all their glory. For those who loved the British original, moments like that punctuated a script that otherwise was pretty similar to the original; and sometimes individual shots were identical, and beautifully recreated.

One warms straight away to the new Sam Tyler, and to the new blond Annie, even if the latter's hair cut looks just as ridiculous as the British Annie's, perhaps more so. The big question at this stage is whether Harvey Keitel is going to work as Gene Hunt. Certainly he already seems to be an improvement on the Colm Meaney casting of the earlier pilot, but there are still a few worrying signs. He is much older than Philip Glenister, the British Gene Hunt, and he is smaller in stature, not the kind of imposing figure that Glenister still cuts, now in the Life on Mars sequel Ashes to Ashes. Glenister's performance was the key to the success of the original. He is a bully, a rogue, a bigot and yet still lovable, funny and sometimes right. Keitel is playing the bully and the rogue in such a way that it is difficult to imagine how we are ever going to grow to like him, still less to laugh at his absurdly brilliant quips. Keitel's Hunt had one such line, something about sperm dancing towards some eggs, but it was hastily delivered and unfunny.

On the whole, though, it was not at all bad. I doubt it will be as successful as the American Office, the first really successful adaptation of a British original, but you never know. Given the clear progress that they have made since the original disastrous pilot, perhaps this can continue to improve. It will be interesting to find out.

The American Presidential Debates: Time to Let the British in

BBC America is running an advertising campaign at the moment in which it characterizes itself as The Birthplace of American TV, citing great British programmes like Life on Mars, which are now being remade for an American audience. Britain's most successful imports, though, often carry over key personnel to make sure that they survive the transition. American Idol, the hugely popular American TV series, is a version of the British Pop Idol, and carried with it Simon Cowell. I have just finished watching the second of the presidential debates between candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, styled as a "town hall" debate, and I think the time is ripe for the injection of some British television expertise to refresh what has become a tired, over-rehearsed, over-polished and frankly tedious format.

The fact is that candidates for the presidency do not at any point face a decent public grilling. They are not held to account or pressed on issues of importance. They are allowed at these debates to give a series of mini-presentations, the over-rehearsed nature of which only presents itself when the candidates trip over a phrase, or introduce the second half of their response too early. Each debate has a "moderator" but this figure is essentially a facilitator, a coordinator who provides invitations for the candidates to begin each of their mini-presentations. There are rarely serious follow-up questions and rarely the encouragement to get the candidates actually debating with one another. On one occasion tonight, the moderator, Tim Brokaw, acted to close down debate at a moment when there was a flicker of interest, as Obama asked to respond to McCain and Brokaw pleaded time constraints.

It is time, then, for the injection of some British expertise and experience. At British General Elections, all candidates, and especially potential prime ministers, will expect to be get some serious grilling from the masters of the art. Let's bring Jeremy Paxman over for several weeks before each presidential election, and let's test each candidate's mettle. Let's find out what they really think about the key issues, with every dodge exposed, every evasive manoeuvre challenged, every question repeated until we get either an honest answer or an embarrassed candidate. Just as Simon Cowell was imported to give wannabee American idols a hard time, let's import Jeremy Paxman to give the presidential wannabees an even harder time.


Jeremy Paxman: the new Simon Cowell?

The success of this move will reignite interest in the presidential debates and will encourage more of the same. Once Americans have got used to Paxman, we can introduce them to John Humphrys. British politicians are afraid of Humphrys. They would rather do anything than be interviewed by him, and yet they know that they cannot duck their responsibility to the British public to be held to account by him. Give the candidates an hour with Humphrys and then we will have a serious test of character and a genuine series of searching, rigorous questioning.


John Humphrys: how would McCain and Obama cope?

The injection of this kind British expertise into the the race for the White House would serve to knock the candidates off the stride of their prepared answers, allowing the voters to understand what makes their potential presidents tick. And having strong British interviewers could add some extra distance from the all too easy clichés of the candidates' appeals to the American "middle class" (everyone in America is apparently middle class). Presidential candidates talk over and over again about "Americans"; a non-American interviewer could press them on international issues in a way that could dismantle these easy appeals.

Tonight's debate was billed as a "town hall" debate. This means that there is some input from members of the public. But the handful of questions that come from the audience, like the moderator's questions, act only as prompts for the candidates to give mini-presentations on the broad subject. The lack of applause or broader audience participation leads to an eerie, unreal kind of stage-managed experience that cannot engage the viewer. The audience are waxworks, everything is restrained. Sometimes politics needs passion. If new voters and apathetic voters are to get energized, the current format is missing the mark. If there is going to be an audience in a "town hall" format, let's bring on David Dimbleby and let's have a full Question Time style programme, with a large, intelligent, passionate audience, allowed to speak, allowed to ask follow-up questions, with strong chairing and holding to account from Dimbleby.


David Dimbleby: could he show them a passionate "town hall" debate?

Good politicians have nothing to fear from robust interviewing and thorough grilling by professionals who represent the public's interest. In a world where politics is becoming ever more glitzy, ever more stage-managed, thorough and rigorous debate is more important than ever. Strong, honest, passionate debate should be at the heart of our politics. If we are committed to democracy, it is too important to neglect.

A Brit in the Final of the US Open!

This is such a rare event that it demands to be blogged -- a Brit has made it to the final of a Grand Slam!

Murray Stuns Nadal to Reach Final

I didn't remember there having been a Brit in the final of any Grand Slam tournament for an age, so I looked it up AFP tells us:

Murray became only the third British man to reach a Slam final in the 40-year Open era, after Greg Rusedski in the 1997 US Open and John Lloyd at the 1977 Australian Open, and would be the first to win a title by beating Federer.

All I can say is "Come on, Andy!"

Oddly, it is not at all easy to find out the when and where of the US TV coverage on this one. None of the online TV Guides have been updated to reflect the fact that the US Open has gone on to an extra day. I had to go to the BBC Five Live website to find out when it was on, though it then occurred to me that there is probably an official site with details, and I am right -- US Open 2008, which confirms that it is on CBS, like the rest of the US Open, and it begins at 5pm ET (10pm BST).  It is remarkably low profile, though, for CBS and the American TV schedules -- CBS have not even updated their website with news of the rescheduled final. Mind you, if you are in the UK, it's not on network TV, I am sorry to see, but on Sky Sports 1, and at least we can view it on network TV here.

Dr Horrible

We are big Joss Whedon fans in our house (Buffy, Firefly, Serenity, looking forward to Dollhouse), so we naturally were ready for "Act 1" of his new web-only project tonight. And it did not disappoint. It is a kind of anti-super-hero nerd's musical, and the first episode was great. Only 13 minutes or so in the first instalment, but a very well spent thirteen minutes, and we will be watching Act II tomorrow, and almost certainly watching Act I again:

Dr Horrible

For those, like me, who loved the musical episode of Buffy, this is what you have been waiting for for the last five years. I would love this to work for Joss Whedon, and for thousands of internet nerds to say, "Yay, more!" and for it to become a cult. In any case, it is free, and only 13 minutes of your time, so what is to lose?

When British stuff breaks into America

As a British expat in America, I am intrigued by the British things that break through in America. There is an unpredictability about the things that make it and the things that don't. Sometimes one forgets which British things Americans like and which they don't, or, more accurately, which they have heard of and which they have not. What is curious is that most Americans are Anglophiles. They love Britain, the British, our history, our castles and especially our accents. Yet when it comes to British imports, it is never that easy to work out what the criteria for admiration are. The really big things -- the Beatles, Monty Python, Tolkien, Harry Potter, James Bond -- are loved with a passion by many Americans. They are all bigger here than they are in the UK. There is no question of Americans having heard of them. Other things attain a kind of cult status here -- British stuff for Americans in the know. One of my favourite TV series, The Prisoner, is like that. I was shopping in Kroger the other day (a supermarket on the scale of smaller Sainsburys and Tescos) and I was stopped by a bloke who was delighted to see my Prisoner t-shirt and wondered where I had bought it from. He gave a kind of knowing chuckle when he heard my English accent .

There are other things that have a kind of cult status, an underground fan base, that encourages the big cheeses to try to turn them into something truly large and American, sometimes with disastrous results. The Office is a superb exception to this rule -- it is remarkable to see how successful the American version of the sublime British original has been. It is never as funny as the original, but it is always worth watching, and after several years it has a life of its own. The attempt a few years ago to transform Steven Moffat's brilliant Coupling into an American sitcom was a disaster, and the forthcoming attempt to Americanize Life on Mars looks so bad that I was really hoping it was a parody. We saw a short trailer for it on the telly just the other day, and there was no improvement on the earlier one.

American television at its best is wonderful. Anyone in the UK who enjoys television also enjoys American television. I love the best American TV. A British channel's success is as much about its ability to find the best American shows to broadcast in primetime as it is about its ability to commission new programmes of its own. But there is an unnecessary reluctance on the part of the big cheeses in the States to do the same, and to buy top British programmes and put them in key slots alongside the homegrown programmes. It wasn't always like this. Back in the late 60s, with more imaginative programme schedulers, The Avengers was broadcast primetime. Not so recently. BBC America gets respectable viewing figures, but it is the tiniest section of the overall audience.

I wonder what the next big British thing here will be? I doubt that it will be Doctor Who but I love to imagine that it could happen. "New Who", i.e. the revival of the series after a sixteen year hiatus, stands up above anything on American TV at the moment, and it is just beginning to impinge on American media consciousness, growing out of the kind of "cult" status it has enjoyed here for years. Each of the four new series of Who (read "seasons" in the US), from 2005 to the present, has been broadcast first on SciFi, then on BBC America, and then on PBS and associated channels in syndication. The current series (the fourth) is almost up to speed on SciFi, lagging behind by less than three weeks. Mind you, it is infuriating to see SciFi still cutting content in order to squeeze the show into an American hour with advertisements.

A sign of the growing awareness of new Who comes in its appearance in a political cartoon recently, This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow (HT: Outpost Gallifrey). And still more importantly, there was a lengthy discussion of Russell T. Davies, the person responsible for the resurrection of Doctor Who, in the New York Times (HT: Loren Rosson), which is unprecedented:

Who Altered British TV? ‘Who’ Indeed
By SARAH LYALL

It's a nice piece, if a shame that its author feels obliged to go on and on about Captain Jack's sexuality. There are several perhaps insurmountable problems with the programme becoming anything more than cult viewing here, though:

(1) Many of the episodes are too long. As soon as they push beyond 42 minutes, it doesn't fit into the American TV hour. The Sci-Fi style edits are pretty awful.

(2) These thirteen episode series don't stretch across an American-style 22-24 episode series.

(3) The revival is already so well underway that it seems unlikely that any big channel would be inclined to dip into the series at this stage.

(4) Many Americans can't understand the dialogue. David Tennant speaks very fast and BBC America offers subtitles for those who can't understand British English.

And actually, come to think of it, there is something quite nice about being one of those in the know.

More on The Prisoner remake

Six of One have more on the remake of The Prisoner (previous comments here: No Prisoner Remake, Prisoner Remake Back on the Agenda), which now sounds like it is about to get off the ground, with filming in Namibia and Cape Town to start soon, and Sir Ian McKellen as Number Two and James Caviezel as Number Six. It's a six episode series. Presumably this means that it will leave open the way for a second series if the first is successful. ITV seem to be working in these blocks of six these days -- Primeval has been a good example of a Saturday night six-parter, one each year for the last two years. The casting of James Caviezel is interesting to me because of his role as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson directed 2004 film, about which I have written quite a bit, both in print (book details) and on my academic blog. The one other element of interest in this tidbit of news is that only McKellen is listed as playing Number Two. In the original series, the actor playing Number Two changed each week, and it was one of the most compelling things about the series that each week there would be a new guest actor. Perhaps McKellen is just the first and most famous, or perhaps this is one major element in the "re-imagining"? Whichever one, McKellen could be very interesting indeed in this role.

Joseph "Trouble with Tribbles" Pevney

You don't have to be a Trekkie to have enjoyed "The Trouble with Tribbles", one of the finest episodes in the original series of Star Trek. Its director, Joseph Pevney, died on May 18, aged 96. Tomorrow's Times has his obituary:

Joseph Pevney
Hollywood film director who turned successfully to television and became one of the stalwarts of the Star Trek series

Hitler annoyed at Torchwood Series 2 Finale

This is fantastic. It will only make sense if you are up to date on your Torchwood. Warning: Torchwood Series 2 spoilers and strong language:


Watch Torchwood Series 2 Finale Upsets Even Hitler in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

(H. T.: Patrick Raiford)

(Update: 28 May 2009: link above refreshed).

Life on Mars American Style

This looks so unbelievably bad that it is almost funny. Almost.



I seriously wondered at first whether it was a parody (but see An American Life on Mars?). Here's my question. In the UK, the best American shows are broadcast primetime on mainstream channels. Why don't the American networks do the same thing with the best British shows? The trailer above begins "Based on the Groundbreaking International Hit Series". So why not just show the groundbreaking international hit series? In fact, the only way to watch the latter on American TV was on a massively cut, non-widescreen version on BBC America.

Dollhouse Trailer

The latest Joss Whedon project is Dollhouse, which will be on Fox in the USA this autumn. No doubt Sky will pick it up in the UK. Viola and I are big Joss Whedon fans, and especially Buffy. There is now a trailer available, and it looks like fun:



It's great to see the return of Eliza Dushku in this new series, Faith from Buffy. We were fans of Tru Calling, her previous outing.

Update (Monday, 20.42): the previous version went off-line; above is a newer, official version.

Prisoner Remake back on the agenda

I think I am pleased to hear the news that the remake of The Prisoner is back on the agenda again, after Sky TV pulled out a couple of years ago (No Prisoner remake . . .). ITV are making it, but there is precious little information so far. The two actors currently mentioned in connection with the role of Number Six would both be interesting choices, Christopher Eccleston (brilliant as the ninth doctor in the revived Doctor Who in 2005) and Jim Caviezel. Both actors have "Jesus" connections, Eccleston in the Russell T. Davies drama, The Second Coming in 2003, and Jim Caviezel in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. I doubt that either figure will end up in the role, but either would be very interesting.

The best news article on the proposed remake is on BBC News, Prisoner remake "set to go ahead". The Prisoner Online is keeping watch; so too are The Unmutual, Six of One and Portmeirion's own website.

How good is British TV at the moment?

News of the anticipated end of the WGA (writers guild of America) strike finally came this week, and I suppose I am looking forward to the resumption of some of those series that have been off the air, especially Chuck and Desperate Housewives (I wish they'd renew Bionic Woman -- we were fans). But I don't think it's affected us as much as it has most because there is so much good stuff on British TV at the moment, especially in the second half of each week. First we get Torchwood on Wednesday nights, and this week was a double, even a triple treat. There were back to back episodes for the first time, on BBC2 and BBC3, they were probably the best two yet, and the second of the two, Reset, marked the very welcome re-introduction of Martha Jones to the Whoniverse; here's the trailer, with Martha at the end:



In the episode, did you notice Martha's theme (from Doctor Who) playing in the background? And what was Jim Robinson from Neighbours (Alan Dale) doing in this episode? First we had Kylie, and now her Dad! He gets around a bit -- he was the Vice President in one of the series of 24 (the second?).

Then on Thursdays, it is Ashes to Ashes. Two episodes in and I am already enjoying it as much as Life on Mars. It's fabulous. One of my favourite lines so far was Gene Hunt's "Sorry, come again, I don't speak Hindustani". One possible anachronism last night: Alex Drake used her remote control to find four channels, the first of which was clearly BBC1, the second BBC2, the third presumably ITV, but the fourth? Channel 4 was not launched until 1982, a year later. But perhaps anachronisms don't matter in this universe since, after all, she keeps talking about this as her own construct.

Friday's treat for us is the double-bill of Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach, already compulsive viewing, and perhaps the only way I was ever going to find myself watching a regular soap, one which only makes sense with the comedy that comes straight before it. Actually, come to think of it, I did watch one episode of another soap recently, the Alan Bennett-style episode of Eastenders featuring the brilliant monologue from Dot Cotton (June Brown). I heard a feature on it on Front Row on Radio 4, which is what made me watch this one, and it was great.

Oh, and tomorrow, it is Paul Cornell's episode of Primeval, which should be well worth watching. It's a fun series, and I'd be surprised if this episode doesn't turn out to be the best yet since Cornell's episodes of Doctor Who are among the best ever.

So we're coping fine with the limited menu of American TV at the moment. Apparently DVD sales and rentals and computer game sales and rentals have gone up during the WGA strike. But for us, it's a case of tuning into the Beeb, ITV and Channel 4, and there is plenty there to keep us happy.

Organgrinder's Best TV Shows of 2007

One of the blogs I follow regularly is The Guardian's Organgrinder. Recently they've been running a poll on the best television shows of 2007 and the results are now in:

Your Favourite TV Shows of 2007

You can quickly tell that Organgrinder readers are a discerning bunch. Doctor Who is rightly at Number 1. And other favourites in our house are found high up the list too, Life on Mars (11), Battlestar Galactica (12) and Spooks (19). Cranford comes high on the list, at 7, and rightly so. We have only caught up on this since Christmas and thought it superb. Heroes, at 2, is much too high on the list, but this list doesn't take into account the weaker second series, which has not aired yet in the UK. It also does not have one of our favourites of 2007, Chuck, which has not yet aired in the UK.

Heroes / Torchwood Crossover Trailer

This is a twenty second gem from BBC2 last night. Heroes reached the end of its first series in the UK (we are about ten episodes into the second season in the US, in what may turn out to be the end of the season because of the writers' strike), and it broadcast this nice crossover trailer, advertising the forthcoming second series of the fantastic Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood:



We are particularly looking forward to the second series of Torchwood in our house given the news that there will be a pre-watershed family-version repeat. I don't think our kids have quite forgiven us for not letting them watch the first series, as if it were our fault that it had all that adult material in it. Now if they could arrange pre-watershed edits of all thirteen episodes of the first series, they will be even happier.

Death of the TV Title Sequence

Den of Geek counted down their Top 10 TV Title Sequences of All Time (Part Two; the winner) this week and mostly got it right, e.g. The Prisoner and Doctor Who are both in the top five, which has to be right. I like the inclusion of The Tomorrow People in the top ten too -- watching that YouTube clip still makes me tingle with a kind of anxious nostalgia.

These days, the art of the great title sequence is dying a death, especially in the USA, and it's a development I am not keen on. I think it goes back to the first season of Lost, which made do with a three-four second mood-graphic instead of a proper title sequence, and the programme is poorer for it. I find myself not wanting to give it the benefit of the doubt. And then Heroes came along last year and tried to do the same thing. If any programme needs a good, old fashioned title sequence to pull you into the excitement of the subject matter, it's Heroes, and imagine how good it could have been, with all those drawings of key characters, and clips of actions of them doing their thing. Now, this year, with several new programmes airing, they are all following Lost's lead, with no decent title sequence. Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman, all of these, this week airing their first episodes, failed to capture the viewers attention with an exciting title sequence. A shame.

New Bionic Woman

On Exploring our Matrix, James McGrath reckons that the new, reimagination of The Bionic Woman, which premiered on NBC in the USA last night, is "off to a decent start, with characters that have the potential to enchant us and draw us into their stories, and keep us glued to the TV night after night". We thought so too -- a very promising start. Jamie Sommers's reaction when she first wakes up, about half-way through the episode, was a great moment. Sommers is played by British actor Michelle Ryan who is doing a Hugh Laurie and using a very convincing (to me, at least) American accent. She was most recently seen on the short British series Jekyll, written by Doctor Who writer Stephen Moffatt. (It only took me a couple of links to get it back to Doctor Who). Ryan was excellent; I am looking forward to more. One disappointing element: they have pitched the series at an adult audience where the original was a family show. The reason that 30 and 40 somethings are tuning in to watch this new version is that they watched the original in the 1970s and 80s. It would be nice now to watch the new version with our kids, as we now do with the re-imagined Doctor Who.

Sarah Jane Adventures

Well, we might have a long time to wait before the Doctor Who Christmas special, but there's plenty to keep us going in the interim. We are enjoying series three on SciFi in the US at the moment, and last Friday we had "Blink", one of my favourite episodes ever. Meanwhile on Saturdays on BBC America we have Torchwood, the superb Doctor Who spin-off, episode 2 of which aired on Saturday. That's one we can't watch with the kids. But one we can begins next Monday, on BBC1 in the UK, the first series of Sarah Jane Adventures. It will be nice to be able to watch a character from my childhood (she was the third and fourth doctors' companion) with my own children. There's a nice new website, and the first 19 second trailer has been uploaded to Youtube:

Jonny Vegas on Evangelical Christianity

I have just finished watching Jonny Vegas' Guide to Evangelical Christianity while doing housework. Like Steven Harris, I was pleasantly surprised. The programme aired on Channel 4 in the UK last night and I was expecting the usual amusing but clichéd American evangelical bashing. Instead, it was a sympathetic portrayal of the better side of evangelical Christianity in America in what was more about Vegas's personal journey than it was about anything else. At points it was quite moving, and without spoiling the ending if you have not seen it yet, I was impressed by Vegas's candour and honesty. I'd love to see him make a follow-up.

No Prisoner Remake but More Doctor Who

When asked to name my favourite TV series, I am often tempted to list the cult 60s classic The Prisoner right at the top. I first watched it in 1984, when it was shown not long after the launch of Channel 4. I even used to go along to the conventions with my brother Jonathan; and for years we had had family holidays to Portmeirion, where the series was filmed. Given the cult status of the original, I have not quite known what to make over the planned remake of The Prisoner over the last year or so. Initially, the news was that Sky One was to remake the show, partnering with AMC in the USA. But it now seems that the plan has been abandoned. A Digital Spy interview with Richard Wolfe (head of Sky One) featured the following comment:

What happened with the planned remake of The Prisoner?
"The Prisoner is not happening. It's a very quintessentially British drama and there were too many creative differences trying to share it with an American partner. I didn't want to be responsible for taking something that is quintessentially British and adapting it in a way that I didn't feel was reflective of the way people would remember it and the way people would want it to be. So we called time on that."

Although some on the web are commenting on this as breaking news, it is worth adding that Sky actually pulled out of this project some months back; the Daily Telegraph reported this in April:

Sky One Pulls Out of Prisoner Remake
Neil Midgley

It was Sky One’s biggest drama commission of 2007 – but now the channel has pulled out of an £8million remake of cult 60s TV drama The Prisoner after an acrimonious row with US cable movie channel AMC, its co-funding partner. “We love the original Prisoner series but on this occasion we have decided not to proceed with our co-production partners,” said a Sky spokesman . . . .

At that point they were still talking about the possibility of finding other funding for the project, but it does not sound like that has come to anything.

Meanwhile, there has been good news this week has been of the continued production of Doctor Who, now confirmed right through to 2010. We already knew of the fourth series next year, currently in production, but the latest official news is that there will be three specials in 2009, written by Russell T. Davies and starring the current doctor David Tennant, and a full length series in 2010. That is excellent news, even if we will be a little short in 2009. It looks like David Tennant really is set to make the role his own, and I am delighted with the news that Russell T. Davies is going to stay with the show for the time being since he is responsible for the brilliant re-invention of the series over the last few years, and he has written some fine episodes.