For some reason, in between bouts of sitting on the roof playing Scrabble in the sun, it’s been a bit of a nineties TV weekend. We’ve had too much sun the last two weekends anyhow…
First up has been American Gothic – a Twin Peaks-esque horror/supernatural series from the mid-90s that starred Gary Cole as the excellently ambiguous Sheriff Buck. A great character study in how people deal with someone who’s obviously the embodiment of evil, yet who’s consistently nice and helpful to everyone, of course always to his own ends. The DVD transfer’s not great, the series sometimes looks dated, and the really strange thing is that the episodes are on the discs in the wrong order (see wikipedia for the correct order), but even with all that it’s still held up really well 15 years later. As people said, it was ahead of its time and these days would likely have been an HBO series rather than CBS. Such is life.
On a slightly lighter note, Channel 4 on demand now has the hilariously surreal Mr Don & Mr George available for your viewing pleasure. Again, the order is slightly out, no idea why, but all six wonderful, bizarre and charming episodes are there to enjoy. Trailing the exploits of two men called McDiarmid, but not related, this is another series that was arguably way ahead of his time – an offshoot of the also excellent Absolutely (also available on Channel 4 right now).