I saw The Promise when it was first shown. I thought it was brilliant - one of the best things on TV this year (and it's been a good year). I didn't comment at the time because it shows the Israelis in a poor light and, at the time, there was enough Israel-bashing going on on Fiso as it was.

Thanks for those comments about The Promise, Ak and Billy, sounds interesting. I will look for it when the school term ends and I have time to watch whatever I want. Lars Von Trier's Melancholia just opened here and I just hope it lasts a week so I can finish my last paper (on the two versions, 1925 and 1942, of Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush) and squeeze it in before exam preparation begins. I suspect Melancholia will play to empty theaters.

Article on "slow TV" with the start of series 2 of The Killing (Danish version):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15757413

I watched the US remake of 'The Killing' series 1 but not the Danish one.

1) Was it similar enough so I could start watching the Danish version from Series 2?
2) Was The Danish one really better? I started liking the US one but got quite annoyed by it towards the end. Not just the slowness but the formulaic 'set up a new suspect - prove it wasn't him - add in new suspect' approach to each episode with no real long term development on any suspect / plotline. And the characters, scenery and weather were DULL.

I thought the "dullness" - and the endless rain (that's Seattle for you) - added to the mood. Yes, it was formulaic to some extent, but it was the acting and the pervading atmosphere that made it so watchable. It actually felt more Scandinavian than American.
And the storyline changed quite a lot, so you could easily go on to watch the Danish version if you haven't already.

Meanwhile the Danish series two starts on Saturday, BBC Four

Just started watching a show called "The Slap". It's an Australian 8 part series, adapted from a book (I believe of the same name)

Each episode follows on from the last one, so you get a continous story, however each episode is seen through the eyes of another character as the storyline continues. The first episode was gripping, tense and made me cringe a little. I'm looking forward to episode 2, which I'm just streaming online.

I do know that BBC4 are currently showing episodes on Thursday nights, repeated on Saturday nights. However, I think it's approx on Episode 5 on the BBc currently.

Anyone else seen this? Worth continuing?

Seen 3 so far. It's quite good. 7/10.

I'm watching The Slap. Two episodes so far, first was excellent, second was very good.

I've read the book, which is good but not great (although the sex scenes are among the most convincing I've ever read). I wasn't going to bother with the TV series but I caught the last one, which featured the baby-sitter Connie, and thought it was brilliant. The actress playing Connie brings much more to the part than the book does. So I'm sticking with the series from now on .

Connie (ep4) was pretty good. The awful, whining Rosie next week , think it might even include the court case.

I don't know about the series but in the book Rosie is by far the most unsympathetic character. You just want to throttle her.

Presumably the series won't show her breastfeeding her four-year-old son

You clearly missed episodes 1 to 3......

I'd like to reiterate Breaking Bad and Oz are 2 of the finest, grittiest and entertaining shows to come out of the US. Rome is also excellent boys own stuff.

Now a confession, my fave ever TV series has to be Poldark based upon the Winston Graham novels and set in stormy Cornwall. Fluffed lines, wobbly sets and a magnificent turn from Christopher Biggins. Forgive me.

The Slap was written by a gay man. Which is odd (edit - it's not odd that a gay man wrote a book btw, it's odd that he can write so convincingly about heterosexual sex without (presumably) any experience of it). American Pyscho written by Brett Easton Ellis (who I'm fairly sure is gay) has some pretty convincing and graphic sex scenes.

I've no idea what point I'm actually trying to make here, btw.

Watched episode 3 Harry last night and that was very good although missed the end because Virgin Plus keeps ending the bloody programme early (says the programme lasts 1 hour but stops at 55 minutes - twice now ).
Can anyone tell me what happens when he finds his son?

Sky+ did that to me as well so I also Sky+'d the repeat. Same thing I was going to look at iPlayer but couldn't be bothered in the end. Hope it would show at the start of Episode 4. It didn't...

You didn't miss much. From what I remember, Harry finds him wandering round the streets and the boy says he ran away because he thought the whole slap thing was his fault, because it happened during the cricket game. Then Harry starts to feel guilty. You can probably watch it on BBC iPlayer. I might watch the episodes I missed on iPlayer myself - if I ever find the time!

Is it just me (and Mrs m) or has The Slap become incredibly dull and s l o w . Doesn't help that I don't really like any of the characters and the only half-appealing ones to get their own episodes (Anouk and the Greek grandad) are only on the periphery of the main storyline. Also, if you blinked you missed the main court case which I thought was going to be the crux of the story and probably the finale.

Thankfully, only one more episode but that is centred on the dull young boy (again on the periphery).

I agree. The Connie and Rosie episodes seem to be in a different league to the ones that followed.

I thoroughly enjoyed it & agree that Israel wasn't shown in a good light but neither were 'we' frankly.

For any one that missed it, the first season of the excellent 'Game Of Thrones' is being shown on Sky Atlantic tonight (episodes 1 5) & tomorrow (episodes 6 10) @ 9pm ...

And we have to wait until April for series 2. being trailered yesterday.

I am starting a senior level English course on Jan. 9 exclusively devoted to a TV series, The Wire, which in my mind is easily the best and most sophisticated drama in the history of television. I am not sure exactly how this is going to work but I just finished a wonderful literature course with the same prof, so it should be interesting, challenging and provocative. The oddest thing about the course is that it turns out that one of the accompanying texts we will read is George Eliot's 19th Century novel Middlemarch, which I have now read about a quarter of, and think is brilliant.

Quite a claim! Surely you're overlooking some of the BBC's classic adaptations. I'm thinking especially of Trollope's The Barchester Chronicles, Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (the more recent one, with Damian Lewis and Gina McKee). All three bring qualities to the drama that actually manage to improve on the books. Then there's ITV's The Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited; or Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. The Wire is obviously very good, but I wouldn't call it "easily" the best drama in the history of TV. "One of the best" would be closer to the mark.

Interesting that you're enjoying Middlemarch. I thought it was spoilt by its length, as are many 19th-century door-stoppers. They were written for a period when there were far fewer demands on people's time - especially that of the leisured, book-reading classes - and, like Dickens, they were deliberately spun out. For me, Middlemarch would be improved if you cut it by 200 pages or so (you'd still have 500-600 left). There are pages and pages of quite dull and obvious social commentary that is of little interest to the modern reader (just as Tolstoy's endless digressions on farming and husbandry in Anna Karenina is tedious and irrelevant to today's readers).

Is anyone out there who really likes this series also a fan of the books?

The reason I'm asking is that I got my 15 year old a set of the books for Christmas, not really even realizing they were a (very well thought of) TV series, and am wondering whether I should hold off reading them until I've seen the series.

As most of you avid readers know, we are seldom happy with the screen adaptation of nearly any of our favorite books, and as I've heard nothing but good things about both the series and the books, am wondering if one will spoil the other.

I think whichever route you chose first is probably going to end up being your favourite version.

I will say though that the first season was fantastic, I watched it again over xmas & loved it just as much as I did the first time around so despite being really rather desperate to find out what happens next I've resisted buying any of the books & will wait until April for season two.

I'm pretty sure however that there will be things in the books that don't make it into the TV series so if you are an avid reader (I'm certainly not) then perhaps it would be best to read the books first ...

Obviously the examples you suggest of other outstanding TV dramas are worthy of consideration Billy, although I have not seen all of them. The ones I have seen are excellent. I would add the first season of Prime Suspect as well. I have always been a bit of an Anglophile, as for most of my life the UK was almost the sole source of quality television for adults.
That changed with the creation of HBO and the development of other subscription channels in the US which I would argue provide a level of sophistication beyond anything that has come before as they have no sponsors to please other than their paid subscribers, who by paying to see such a channel signal their approval and demand for such sophistication, and pretty much no limits in presenting the obscene vulgarity and corruption of aspects of modern life. These series turn some of the best writers and directors and actors in the world loose to produce the most ground-breaking, relevant and deliberately provocative television ever seen. Oz, Deadwood, The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Treme, Boardwalk Empire, and the best of them all, The Wire, all come from these channels.
Interestingly they have created a new form, a 50, 60, or 70-hour film, which enables the chief artistic voice to adopt the devices heretofore limited to novels, in terms of the pace of storytelling and the development of characters. Remember that in Moby Dick, for example, we don't even meet Captain Ahab for over 100 pages or confront the white whale until the final chapters. Melville, like Eliot, and like David Simon of The Wire can take extraordinary care and time in presenting the process and unfolding of character, as Eliot describes it, and the shrinking and expanding of virtues and faults, to use her words. Yes, it is necessary to wean folks off the habit of unrelenting fast-paced narratives, relying on musical cues to tell them how to feel and respond, simplistic characters and story lines squeezed into sixty minutes.
The Wire is the most profound and polished attack on modern capitalist society, on the pathology of the modern city, particularly the modern American city, the abandonment and grotesque mistreatment of the urban underclass and the total betrayal of society as a whole by corrupt institutions like the police, the political system, the education system and the mainstream media, that has ever appeared on any screen. It is the best and most powerful dissection of the poisonous character of internal or office politics one could hope for. It is also a stinging exposure of the insane and incomprehensibly stupid War on Drugs. Better even then the British-German co-production Traffic, which I adore. I love the way it displays how modern institutions punish creativity, integrity and actual devotion to achieving the alleged goals of those institutions, all the while molding the most gifted and altruistic into soulless compromisers and ass-coverers.
It is angry and provocative and technically masterful. To those who watched it closely, characters like Bubbles and Omar, and McNulty and Stringer Bell, and so many others have the remarkable authenticity, complexity and uniqueness only found in the great novels. It is not perfect, nor despite suggestions to the contrary, always purely realist, though that is not a criticism. To the thoughtful viewer it is far more than a deeply rich entertainment. It is a portrait of a corrupt society and an incredibly unjust world, a world gone mad, and like all great art and thought addresses the core questions of life. It is that good. That is why it is a legitimate subject for an entire term's focus in a senior level English course and why it is better than anything that has come before it on television. IMHO.

A show called "Lost Girl", recently renewed for its third season in Canada, has just begun a run in the US. It is filled with "fae", a species that predates humans, and has at its lead a sexy female character who is just learning that she is also a part of this group.

I caught the premiere and like the concept, and if the writing is as strong as the cast seems to be, could turn out to be a very promising distraction. Seems a slam dunk for fans of Buffy.

It's halfway through season 2 over here, but haven't seen any myself

Connie and Rosie are the names of my daughter and my cat.

That is all.

Must admit did think we produced some of the best TV, but recently have been watching some of the French and Scandinavian output, its very good, especially the Danish, with that what find interesting (and shaming for us Brits) is though it is in Danish with subtitles, quite often long scenes are in English, noticed it in some Dutch TV as well. Most are on BBC 3 ( think thats right) well worth checking for them and watching

If you're talking about The Killing and Borgen, they were on BBC Four. Borgen is still running, a kind of Danish West Wing. I'm enjoying it, although it's not as good as The Killing.