Stuck at home with a cold...

I'll be honest here. I've spent most of the past couple of days staring at the television. I've got a cold, and that's what I do when I'm too sick to want to do anything else. This has been true since I was very young. In fact, when I was in elementary school, I used to look forward to having a sick day, so I could watch the game shows, back when TV game shows were interesting. Shows like the original "Jeopardy", like "Concentration, like "Password". You had to have a least a little bit of a brain to be able to win these games. This is still true of "Jeopardy", but otherwise I can't think of any game shows that require much brain power.

At least my sick-day television watching is easier in these days of the remote control. I guess I'm giving away my age here, but when I was in elementary school, you had to get up off the couch and switch channels manually. I suppose there were primistive remotes around on some high-end TVs in those days, but I didn't know anyone who had one. Now, all I need to do is aim the remote and click.

So, I've been spending a lot of time aiming and clicking. Not so much on Christmas Day. There was a Doctor Who marathon on, leading up to the new Christmas Special, so that had my attention most of the day. There was also a Who marathon yesterday, but they were all episodes that I've seen recently, so I ventured on to other things, in between trying to cough up a lung.

I tried to catch up on the news yesterday, but most of the programming on MSNBC, which is my punditry of choice these days, was mostly showing "year-in-review" programming. I don't like "year-in-review" shows. The other cable news stations were busy purusing their agendas, which I also wasn't much interested in, and so I moved on to other things. There was a "Castle" marathon on, and I watched a couple of those episodes.

Along the way, the past couple of days, I also watched three episodes of some cable show about conspiracy theories hosted by Jesse Ventura. I like conspiracy theories, even though I don't generally believe in them, and the shows were diverting but ultimately silly. I looked for movies to watch but didn't find much interesting. I thought about catching up on "Dexter" episodes, but decided that I'd have to pay more attention than I was willing or able to summon up, so I didn't do that.

The aforementioned Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Snowmen", was very good, but again, needed more attention than I was able to give to it, so I'm going to have to watch it again. Same with last night's new episode of "The Hour" - it was good, but I'm going to have to watch again when it comes up on On Demand.

The best thing I saw, though, in the past few days (yes, even better than my illness-addled viewing of "The Snowmen") was last night's broadcast of The Kennedy Center Honors. I usually watch those broadcasts very selectively; the shows can be very good, but the can also be very boring. Last night's was the best one I've ever seen, I think. First of all, Led Zeppelin was honored, which I think is just entirely too cool for words. While I'm not sure that, as Jack Black said when he was introducing the segment honoring the band, Zep is the "best band ever", but if not, they're certainly close. And the other honorees, Dustin Hoffman, David Letterman, blues guitarist Buddy Guy, and ballet dancer Natalia Makarova were also more than deserving of their accolades.

I especially liked the tribute to Letterman, which was perfect for his slightly off-center persona. Tina Fey's introduction to the tribute was one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. The ballet in tribute to Makarova was beautiful. I didn't get to see most of the tribute to Hoffman - I was having an extended coughing fit. What I did see was very nice.

The highlights of the night, though were the musical tributes to Zeppelin and to Buddy Guy. Both were brilliant. I especially liked that Jason Bonham, Zepplin drummer John Bohnam, was part of the festivities, and that Ann and Nancy Wilson tackled, and pretty muchy owned "Stairway to Heaven".

But the best thing? The very best thing? That was a quick glimpse of US President Barack Obama singing along to "Whole Lotta Love". Yes, I know. There are many things that are much more important things for a president to know. But somehow, it was just a beautiful thing to see.

Maybe it was just my cold-addled mind, but I really liked that.

Oh, and just a note: I'm feeling better today, but still not well enough to proofread this. So, if you find any typos or other errors, you get two Internet points. But if you do find errors, I don't want to know about them.

Movie Monday...only it's Thursday and I'm talking television...

Now that it's Thursday, I figured it would be a good time to make up the Movie Monday that I completely forgot about on, oh, Monday. It's been a busy week around here, but better late than never, I suppose.

Only today's post is about television rather than movies for the big screen, and is spurred by the announcement of the nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. To be honest, I didn't find that much remarkable in the list of nominees, especially in the film categories. Some of the nominations in those categories are a big quirky, something the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is known for.

However, among the categories for television, one of the nominees for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television jumped out at me because it is a show I'm a big fan of: The Hour.

The Hour is a British production. with its second six-episode series now running on BBCAmerica. It is a period piece, with the first series taking place in the Autumn of 1956 and the current second series beginning a few months after the end of the action in the first.

I love this show. The first season started out following the launch of a new BBC news magazine, "The Hour". It first comes to air as the Suez Crisis is unfolding. But, alongside that world crisis, a smaller drama is unfolding within the staff of the new news show. One of the journalists involved in the show is a young, brash, and brilliant writer, Freddie Lyon (played by Ben Whishaw), who is passed over to be the main presenter on the show for the older, supposedly more photogenic Hector Madden (portrayed by Dominic West). Freddie is not happy about that; he's sure the job should have gone to him. But Freddie has other problems as well: a female friend of his has died in mysterious circumstances, and the producer of the show, Bel Rowley (played by Romola Garai), who is also a longtime friend as well as a woman whom he is interested in romantically, has begun an affair with the very married Hector.

Freddie soon realizes that the death of his friend is tied up with the mysterious Thomas Kish (played by Burn Gorman), who is constantly around the offices of "The Hour" for no good reason, seeming to watch and listen very closely to what everyone there is doing and saying. It turns out that Kish is a government agent, investigating whether or not there is a Communist among the staffers on the show.

In a way, the show is very much a Cold War soap opera. But this is also drama at its finest, and I cannot recommend the show highly enough. The writing is wonderful, and so is the acting. Everything about the show is first-rate. In the series now airing, Freddie is back, taking on organized crime this time. I won't say much more, except that you really should watch, from the beginning of the first series if you can.

As a sort of taste of what the show is about, here is a clip from BBCAmerica introducing Freddie, who I see as the central character of the show:



Really. Go seek out The Hour and watch. It is exceptional.