Then came the ill-fated “family edition” of TAR. Mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons trekking across this great country of ours. I hated it. So much of the appeal of a reality show like TAR is tied to personalities, and the personalities featured in this edition left much to be desired. Even worse, having no one to root for left a viewer for to turn attention to the location-based challenges of this particular race. Not that America is chopped liver, of course, but the series took on the sleepy sepia tint of an old U.S. history text. I had become accustomed to more exotic locales. Yawn.

So much for The Amazing Race - that season killed my interest to the extent that I purged all the old episode recap entries.

Another once-favorite, House, fell by the wayside because a promising storyline - the cranky Vicodin-addicted titular character becoming the target of an equally cranky cop’s vendetta - ended with a thud. It was the worse kind of drama: the kind after which absolutely nothing substantial changes.

The most recent disappointment was Law and Order: Criminal Intent, a show I came to enjoy for the ensemble acting. So, of course, the producers blew up the ensemble. Goodbye, Captain Deakins! Farewell, ADA Carver! What the hell? At least the Deakins character was ushered out by an actual storyline; Carver just seemed to vanish without a remark. Deakins was replaced by a new boss played by Eric Bogosian, complete with anachronistic hair style. Bluh. Color me gone.

It’s not necessarily that these shows totally jumped the shark with these flawed storylines, but that once you become disenchanted with a program, it’s hard to recapture your previous, hard-earned enthusiasm. Once you leave the House, as it were, it’s hard to muster the desire to go back in.

Which is why I fear every day for Midsomer Murders. Don’t disappoint me, Chief Inspector Barnaby!

• Going to Indiana
• Burning blogger
• Malcolm Middleton wishes you a Merry Christmas
• MaryAnnJohanson.com
• Midsomer Murders, dead tree style

In preparation, we have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, a move we hadn’t seen in years. Aside from the charmingly youthful countenances of Harrison Ford and Karen Allen (and Alfred Molina!), the flick had a different kind of magic: it was just a movie. Not a franchise, not a phenomenon, just a fun little film with some thrills and some Nazis and some (not excessive) special effects. I liked it for that.

Anyway: We’re not seeing Indy 4 until we re-watch Indiana Jones and the Grumpy Father, or whatever the third movie was called. Note that we’re skipping Temple of Doom. We own it, but do not speak of it.

• Going to Indiana
• Netflix down! Netflix down!
• Un-x-cited over X Files
• Cloverfield: From “what?” to “wev” in ten minutes flat
• This movie makes me sick!

Annoyingly, TV Land - the network that delivers Gunsmoke to my house - often blares programming information over the closing tune (always for shows I have no desire to watch) and just when when the theme is getting to the good part. On such occasions, I am reminded of one of the signal moments in the degradation of television and our culture at large - the decision to sacrifice the venerable end credit in the name of more commercials.

I have often wondered who exactly is to blame for this societal wrong. Apparently, I should blame the Peacock Network.

The notion of a new inducement to watch commercials appealed to NBC, which has previously pushed through several innovations in prime-time formatting. In 1994, for example, NBC became the first network to squeeze the end credits all but off the screen, and create a seamless (and commercial-free) transition from one program to the next. All the other networks subsequently adopted the practice, intended to keep viewers from straying during long commercial breaks between shows.

Predictably, it’s all about retaining the viewer by leaving her or him even a second to think about picking up that remote. Stay where you are! You don’t want to miss (blah, blah)! Coming right now! Meh.

The effect of this corporate urgency, the desire to squeeze a dime out of every moment, has affected the front end of programs as well as the closing moments. Such urgency is endangered whenever the consumer is allowed to do anything other than, well, consume. Networks can hardly allow viewers to wander like directionless cattle, and are even willing to risk skipping commercials - theirs, and those of their affiliates - between shows and trimming the opening credits in order to keep you right where you are.

Clearly, brevity is key. No drawn-out intro or hokey theme. Networks don’t have time for that — and neither, prevailing TV thinking goes, do the country’s couch potatoes.

“Producers feel, rightly or wrongly, that that interruption, if you will, is going to lose viewers,” Brooks said.

“I think one of the things that has squeezed themes out is this relentless kind of move toward tightening everything, making it go right from joke to joke, from action to action, from shootout to shootout, so that you won’t press the dreaded remote control.”

Thanks to the elimination of commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of another, shows overlap before fickle viewers have a chance to channel-surf to Another Network. More commercials air within a show, making episodes shorter. Main titles and well-rounded theme songs and scores? Sorry, no time, no money.

Time is money, after all, and networks have become increasingly stingy with each - to the detriment of viewers and such quaint pleasures as a quiet moment after a show, and a good theme song.

• When the thrill is gone
• Peanuts not powerful after all
• Somewhat beyond my reach just now
• You’re not terminated, fucker
• Giant Robot, launch!

Much too long a time passed before the solution came to me. “Hey!” I exclaimed mentally. “I have a Netflix subscription. Netflix rents TV shows as well as movies. Why don’t I…”

Yes, why don’t I, indeed. So I did. As a result, my Netflix queue has undergone a complete transformation. Banished for now are the usual noirish crime stories and Fifties monster flicks. In their place, we now have a steady diet of Poirot and Miss Marple, Rosemary & Thyme and a wonderful show called Midsomer Murders. I could try to describe it for you, but the show’s official website does such a good job that I’ll yield the floor:

The programme possesses a unique style. It is almost entirely set within the closed, backwards-looking fictional English county of Midsomer. Midsomer is a world whose inhabitants are a collection of wealthy, amoral and snobbish eccentrics often obsessed with the fairly small lives they lead in these isolated communities. This provides for an enormous amount of friction between them which is observed with a self-mocking, sardonic humour.

The show often highlights the facade put up by people. To the eye Midsomer is a picturesque, peaceful and prosperous county but in fact behind the well-trimmed hedgerows and cricket on the village green is a society brimming with all kinds of vices. Barnaby by contrast offers a stable homelife and an exceptional morality.

Each story is built up carefully, with underpinning currents and unsolved mysteries adding to the bemusement of the detectives. There are usually a number of false leads, such as those who have committed petty crimes, or harbour some dark secret that they attempt to conceal from the world. Despite the sinister, atmospheric edge that runs through the show, it maintains a constant humour.

One feature of the programme is the extremely large number of deaths, especially considering that Midsomer is a small, rural county. Because of the slightly bizarre nature of the place, this does not seem entirely improbable. The show at times even plays on this lack of realism, with characters within it often commenting on the astoundingly high numbers of deaths.

Fittingly, the show’s opening theme is a eerie little tune performed on a theremin.

At the center of the show is Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby: a middle-aged man, devoted to his family but habitually distracted - absorbed, really - by his work. And there’s a lot of work for a homicide detective in Midsomer. John Nettles brings an oddly cheerful gruffness (interesting combination) and dogged persistence to Barnaby, and he is well-complemented by his fellow actors. It doesn’t take much watching before you begin to regard these characters as old friends.

We make the journey to Midsomer County every four or five days, and always enjoy the trip. Pity about all those dead bodies, but entertainment requires sacrifices.

Also: Can’t believe that I forgot to mention that this television series is based on an actual series of novels by an actual author - Caroline Graham. I will have to seek out some of her books for M.

• Midsomer Murders, dead tree style
• Malcolm Middleton wishes you a Merry Christmas
• The spirit of Churchill endures
• Cheers
• When the thrill is gone

Apparently, when your show is introduced by Jeff Zucker, entertainment doesn’t necessarily follow. That intro defined “lame and forced,” incidentally. If “JZ” intros The Office or 30 Rock, I may holler.

A few minutes later: Getting even worse. And hey, it’s a whole hour tonight! Don’t think I’ll stick around for the rest.

• When the thrill is gone
• Rapid aging
• The end of the end credit
• You’re not terminated, fucker
• Un-x-cited over X Files

Yes, I did watch the program some. Yes, Gillian Anderson was very easy to look at. And yes, the “monster of the week” concept - straight outta Kolchak: The Night Stalker - was a lot of fun. These fine attributes were undermined, however, by the yawn-inducing, tinfoil-hatted conspiracy “story arc” that excited legions of nerds but put me to sleep. I can’t even think the words “Smoking Man” or “Lone Gunmen” without wanting to take a nap.

As for the first film - ehh. I seem to remember Mulder being shot in the head, but he shook that off easily enough. Scully got stung by a bee and almost died. Lots of white Antarctic background. Kang and Kodos flying away. And, uh, Rollin Hand but not - strangely enough - Cinnamon Carter. Did I miss anything?

I’m told the TV series went on for a couple of years after the film came out. Odd that I don’t remember.

And now it’s all coming back. Well, it’ll be fun for somebody.

• Getting to Indiana, slowly
• You’re not terminated, fucker
• Aiiieeeee!* Gojira!
• Cloverfield: From “what?” to “wev” in ten minutes flat
• No. No, no, no.

1). Out of Sync With My Life
Perhaps the chief problem with services like Netflix is that DVD rental is inherently a spur of the moment decision. Let’s say I’m sitting at home early on a Friday night after being stood up by whatever evil girl from the coffee shop and I want to wallow in I’m-a-survivor self-pity. I’ll pull myself up from the couch, hop in the Accord and go rent myself some sort of hard-boiled revenge flick, say, Get Carter or Point Blank. With Netflix, you’ve got to predict your mood three to four days in advance. That’s the paradox: if I knew I was going to be stood up, I wouldn’t have gone out in the first place and hence, no need for wallowing.

And so, the DVDs just sit there while I wait to fall back into that just-right state of mind.

Absolutely. Several have been the occasions when I actually dreaded seeing the red envelope in my mailbox because I knew it contained a film I had absolutely no interest - any longer - in watching. Out-of-sync DVD’s don’t “just sit there” in my house, however. Who has time to wait for the return of a given fancy? I tear the cover off the envelopes, reseal them, and put them back in the mail faster than you can say “visit your queue.” The problem, of course, is that I’ve still lost time and have no movie to watch at that moment.

This segues quite nicely into another annoyance with the Netflix schema, one that is not on the Film.com list but is tops (or bottoms, or bottomses, or whatever) on mine. This business of Mac users having to wait until media companies get around to providing a service while Windows users get the goods is nothing new, but it hardly engenders brand loyalty. I’m speaking of the Netflix “Watch Instantly” feature, which might as well be science fiction so far as the lowly Mac demographic is concerned.* Sure, Netflix said it hopes (!) to make the service available to Mac users sometime in 2008 (we’re already in 2008, by the way), or so we’re told. The excuse is that the Microsoft digital rights management used by Netflix only works, naturally, on Windows boxes.

I guess Netflix isn’t so profitable that it could afford to hire an extra programmer (lawyer, actually) or two to come up with a Mac DRM.

If Apple wasn’t so slow on the uptake, it would have announced a movie-rental plan in conjunction with Apple TV that provided actual competition for Netflix’s download plan. But that didn’t happen, and so I’m stuck renting physical discs by mail like a sucker.**

Great. After this rant, I’m no longer in the mood to watch the Poitier version of A Raisin in the Sun. Damn.

* Yes, if I purchase, install, and configure Parallel Desktops and Microsoft Windows, I too be a first-class digital citizen in the eyes of Netflix without having to wait! Wonder if Netflix would discount my subscription as a reward for my investment in software just so I could download their movies?

** This rant doesn’t take into account such aspects of download viewing as picture resolution, sound quality, or bonus features. I’d learn more about it, but obviously there’s to reason for me to rush to learn those things.

• Netflix down! Netflix down!
• The other side of the red envelope
• Netflixed
• Getting to Indiana, slowly
• One guy’s one-day weekend

Fine Living features a pair of shows with the same host, a Canadian designer named Sarah Richardson. Her shows are fascinating to me because of the very different ways in which Richardson is portrayed. On the first and somewhat older show, Room Service, Richardson is soft-spoken and gently enthusiastic as she describes design projects for the style-impaired. She’s really rather sweet; even the background music is soft and pleasant, kind of Windham Hill-ish. The second series, Design, Inc., is something else again: here, Richardson is the snarky, hard-driving leader of a team of designers putting together new looks for clients with cash to burn. It’s like the difference between a tranquil elf princess and a grand and terrible elf queen. At least, that’s the way I describe it to M, who always laughs.

Both shows, “both” hosts, very enjoyable. Though for very different reasons.

• Our cats will demand this
• Somewhat beyond my reach just now
• When the thrill is gone
• The lovely, deadly county of Midsomer
• The end of the end credit

• Olympic confessions
• Upgrade fever, kind of
• Slow re-entry
• Whois
• Official blog of…?