History

The G8 leaders are gathering in Toronto-ish for the G20 summit. On our news, the camera lovingly caresses President Obama as he runs down the stairs. Canadians are disappointed because Michelle isn't with him. Protesters have a special protesters' area with toilets and running water and a police guard. In spite of this, the protesters are upset about efforts to deter them from disrupting the proceedings. It all starts to look like a Russian doll, or one of those Esher pictures.
Personally, I'd feel safer if Gordon Brown were there, but given that he's not, I would settle for Decameron giving Harper a bit of a tongue lashing.

History in the making. Mainly blokes of course. You could argue that since they made this mess, they can bloody well get us out of it, but I feel a better balance would be more likely to come up with a viable and sustainable solution.

David Mitchell has a few things to say about older history. And he's quite right.

Then there's Spartacus. Sounds like an interesting series huh? We missed it the first time round, but it seems to be available for free on Shaw's 'So you missed it the first time round huh?' channel.

I don't like it when history is mucked around with, but if it's not terribly well documented history, I'm prepared for a little bit of wiggle room.
What I'm not prepared for, is something that has both the same quality of dialogue as an eastern European series circa 'Belle, Sebastian and the Horses', that has been dubbed into English, and the same standard of acting as a very small village's am dram group.

This is a three trick pony. Nudity - nowadays almost exclusively used to distract the viewer from poor writing; blood by the gallon, and that rather evocative camera technique where everything goes into slowmo and then suddenly speeds up.

Occasionally all three are used at the same time.

But yet, the unlikely duo of Lucy Lawless and John Hannah, the hope that at some point, the real story of Spartacus will be followed and the Welsh gladiator will lead his band of muscle-bound Aussies into the hills, thence to challenge Rome, and the current TV scheduling that consists of only two other shows worth watching, 'Lie to Me' and 'True Blood', somehow keep us moving on to the next episode.