“You’ve just eaten the baby Jesus!”

Apropos the time of year, five of television’s greatest ever Christmas episodes: Read more

“An intellectual reach-around”

Apparently, there is such a thing as a blogging community (the… “blogosphere”, is that right?). My guess is that one of their central tenets is that blogs must, at some point in their life, mention the work of Aaron Sorkin. Consider this, then, OTT Blog’s coming of age, as I’ve been watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Read more

The West Wing

It’s always tempting, when a long-running TV show that’s not as good as it once was, lumbers into the finishing straight amidst a flurry of eulogies and reminiscences, to stop fighting and just give in. Read more

Lowe and behold

On last night’s episode of The West Wing there was a real, genuine, bona fide “yes!” moment of the kind the show used to do as a matter of course, but which hasn’t bothered with for ages. Read more

The West Wing

Firstly, anyone who has already bailed out on this series: shame on you. Read more

“Before you send $30m of my money to Mexico I want to ask some questions!”

The seventh – and last – series of The West Wing has begun transmission on More4. Having previously bailed out from the show on grounds of it no longer being not even a faint shadow of its former mighty self, it’s proved impossible not to be drawn back to see how the whole sprawling mess tries to resolve itself. Read more

The West Wing

An ex-alcoholic and a wizened septuagenarian with a heart problem running the most powerful country on earth? Read more

The West Wing

Apropos nothing whatsoever, Press Secretary CJ Cregg interrupts a conversation with Communications Director Toby Ziegler to reveal she misses the “husky voice” of some person called Ben she recently lived with for six months. Read more

The West Wing

President Bartlet’s White House isn’t quite the alluring and mysterious realm it once was. It used to play host to one of the most unmissable, unforgettable series on television. Read more

The West Wing

There are few actors who can capture abject weariness and foreboding in one single, defining expression, and still end up looking dignified. Martin Sheen is one of them. The sky is blackening over his term of office as President Josiah Bartlett, but he’s no Richard Nixon, cursing and spilling bourbon and kicking the furniture. Read more

The West Wing

If anyone ever attempted a serious TV dramatisation of the day-to-day workings of our own British government, it’s likely a host of of obstacles would instantly confront them. Chiefly, the fact that no-one in this country really knows what the government does – in the sense of the real minutiae of office life, the routines and rituals of departments, and the colour of the office carpet. Read more