American TV: Answering questions you never needed to know the answer to since 1952

Have you ever lay awake at night wondering who would win in a fight between Genghis Khan and Hitler? I know I haven't. And I imagine you haven't either. Unless you have. In which case, I apologise - and please don't ever speak to me or contact me again.

Luckily for us, there are individuals who have. Strange, obsessed individuals with a lot of money at their disposal.

I've been watching and loving it for an age but feel that I need to mention one of the single greatest TV shows to be exported from the U.S. of States, namely Deadliest Warrior. For those of you who haven't been witness to this absolute delight of a show, it is - for all intents and purposes - the biggest and most expensive game of Top Trumps you'll ever see.

Under the guise of being documentary television, the show takes warriors from history and each episode pits like against (vague) like - I.e. warriors from the roughly the same point in history, if not the same continent.

The first half of the show is spent analysing each combatants weaponry in graphic detail. If they're not razing the fuck out of ballistics dummies, they're slicing through so many pig carcasses it's as though the hosts are trying to save us all from swine flu from pig at a time. Let's get this straight - the hosts must REALLY hate pigs. They use the excuse that they're almost identical to humans when it comes to skin and muscle for weapons testing, but I suspect they're stacking them all up for a huge end of season barbeque.

The show concludes, once all the relative advantages/disadvantages of the weaponry have been calculated, with the data being put through a computer (an Alienware laptop, which they point out every week) and run 1000 times. The end result is re-enacted on screen so you can see the overall winner. This footage is ridiculously over the top and more than likely spattered with incredible amounts of gore.
The hosts are all smart educated men who really should know better; Geoff Desmoulin (biomedical scientist), Dr. Arman Dorian (medical consultant) and show creator Max Geiger (amusing referred to as a 'Computer Whiz', which is an expression I haven't heard since the eighties. They might as well call him a 'Super ElectroBoffin'). They might all have various medical degrees and karate belts between them, but it doesn't stop them whooping like drunken idiots every time a sword is slashed through Porky Pigs dead face or a flamethrower is orgasmically spurted over some helpless vietcong soldier puppets. They're all having an absolute whale of a time, and frankly I don't blame them.

We've had an interesting selection of Deadliest Warriors so far; Green Beret versus Spetsnaz (in which - SPOILER - the Spetsnaz won, surprisingly for an American made show), Nazi Waffen versus Viet Cong, Viking versus Samurai, Ming Warrior versus French Musketeer, etc, (no Kramer versus Kramer or Godzilla versus Mecha-Godzilla yet - give it time though) but Season One ended up in an absolute cracker that was never shown on British television - possibly one of the most tasteless ideas in American television history since somebody decided to give Glenn Beck a job - in the form of The IRA (constantly referred to in the longhand "Irish Republican Army" throughout the show) versus The Taliban. Honestly, I'd strongly recommend you seek this episode out. It'll give you a great indication into how utterly preposterous the show is, but how stupidly addictive and watchable it is too.

I'd been watching it again because Season 3 is about to start, and looks like it might be taking an interesting twist for the season finale - Vampires versus Zombies. The first one to ever hit fictional entities, I'm surprised by how they'll achieve this one. No matter how they do it, it can't be any stupider than any episode of it I've seen so far.

But it's still awesome. Muzzle velocity, entry/exit wound gun porn and all.

We are the Walking Dead

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to what could potentially be one the best TV series of the decade.  Other than (naturally) when Jedward inevitably get their own Natural History documentary series.  The Walking Dead is a piece of televisual excellence which encapsulates everything good about American television which we've seen in Galactica, Firefly (and the myriad of decent series I missed out on, such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, etc).  High movie-like production values, an excellent cast portraying interesting, fleshed out individuals and a bloody great storyline.

Adapted from Robert Kirkmans ongoing comic which has been running since 2003 (which Kirkman says he'll continue to write until he's dead, so it's not ending anytime soon) The Walking Dead tells the (not so original) tale about life after a zombie apocalypse.  Our main protagonist is Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes who wakes from a bullet induced coma (so far, so 28 Days Later - but it doesn't matter) into a world populated by the living dead and a small handful of desperate survivors.

Rick Grimes is played by London actor Andrew Lincoln, and does a remarkable job of portraying this everyman thrust into an absolute nightmare.  Only seems fair that Andrew Lincoln gets a shot at fighting the undead after his fellow This Life actor Jack Davenport had a go at fighting vampires in the excellent underrated TV series Ultraviolet (not to be confused with the abysmal Aeon-Flux-wannabe 2006 movie starring Milla Jovovich).

The comic is absolutely awesome, and I can thank Jon, a good friend of mine, for introducing it to me by buying me the first graphic novel as a present.  I've subsequently gone out and purchased the excellent value for money Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 which collects the first 8 graphic novels into one hefty tome - which as I can vouch is a bugger to transport on holiday and back for sheer weight alone.  If you haven't read it, I can strongly recommend it - and if the pilot episode of Walking Dead the TV series is anything to go by, it's sufficiently different from the comic to keep both fresh and entertaining.  Characters given mere pages in the comic are expanded upon greatly in the TV series.

Whether you're a fan of zombies or not (I personally love 'em, despite George A. Romeros recent attempts to screw up his legacy completely by a run of terrible movies - check out his latest movie Yawn of the Dead), I urge you to watch this.  It's less about the undead and more about the characters of those who have survived the apocalypse - a kind of study of the breakdown of society, if you will.  Although that could be considered a slightly pretentious statement to make about what is effectively a damn entertaining, gory and action packed series about the shambling dead.

The Walking Dead is on FX every Friday at 10 p.m.  Watch it.  Torrent it.  Sneak onto the set and watch it being filmed, kidnap the cast and force them to act out the series in your basement, whatever.

And on a less undead related note, my good friend Neil has posted a lovely warts and all blog post about my wedding.  It's a damn good read, and I'm not just saying that because it's about me.

So Say We All

So, after five years and four reasons (and a potentially destructive writers strike) the genius that is Battlestar Galactica comes to an end. The final double-part episodes are downloading to my PC as I write this, and I'm both excited by the prospect of seeing how it ends - but saddened by the fact that there won't be any more. There's both a made-for-tv prequel movie and a spin-off prequel series, but they won't be the same- they won't be about the crew of the people I've been watching for five years.

Critics and the like will bang on endlessly about how Galactica is a "post 9/11 drama" and how it "neatly parallels the war on terror". This may be true, but I'd prefer to see it remembered as simply a damn fine character driven piece of expertly written Sci-Fi.

For those of you who either avoided it through remembering the cheesy 1978 television series or simply because of a hatred of science fiction, I implore that you watch this series. Other than the basic premise, the series is radically different from its 1978 source and the sci-fi elements in the series have always been secondary to character development and story - not watching it because it is science fiction would be like not watching "The Wire" because you never enjoyed "The Bill".

I know the end will be painful to watch - what makes this programme stand out is the utter bleakness. Every character has gone through the emotional and physical wringer so far, and it can't possibly have a happy ending for any of them.

I won't say that it hasn't lost its way at times. Sometimes I yearn for one of the incredibly shot space battles that dotted the first two seasons and occasionally it has a dodgy episode, but it always finds its way again - unlike Heroes and 24 for which an incurable rot has set in.

So, short spoiler-free summary because I want those of you who haven't watched it to do so. It's one of the best TV shows made in the last twenty years. So say we all.

RL Update: Mum doesn't find out whether the radiotherapy has worked until the first week of April. It was also my birthday on Wednesday. 38 at last. Hurrah.