Now: binge Telly

Binge TV watching

Netflix have commissioned a TV series. Instead of the usual format, which dates back to the one channel, please no-one, news bulletin mid-film model, where there's a week to await the next instalment, Netflix have gone for the box set issue. All season one episodes available from the get-go. Eat as much as you like at one sitting.

The pro-moderation lobby will no doubt have something to say. They tend to be up in arms at anything preceded by the word 'binge' the way Muslim clerics become agitated when the word prophet is preceded by 'cartoon'. It makes sense to me, though.. Not everyone is available on that weekly basis. Batman, the camp 60's Adam West and Burt Ward version (I think it was anyway) used to sign off cliffhangers with “here next week, same time same channel”. Not everyone, me included, is a fan of waiting. No, the waiting does not anything all the sweeter, it just makes it later. Often, during the wait, you decide you can't be bothered, are not, actually, that interested, or go off and find something else to do. In the dim and distant past the BBC broadcast all of (I think) Smiley's People. However many hours. Straight. I never watched the series, but I sat in front of that, mesmerised, transfixed. When series get rave reviews, I still wait for the DVD release, and take them in to my own timetable.

Three, maybe four Christmases ago I got Generation Kill. I put on episode one and BLISS was hooked. The bank holidays worked out so that we were both off the next day. My eyes were starting to close sometime long after midnight. “Can you manage one more?” she asked. “Go on then.”

Good on Netflix for having the imagination to break the out of date mould and try something different. It's probably time for the negative association to be removed from the word 'binge', too. I wouldn't mind going on a winning binge the summer with the cricket team, while enjoying a run accumulation binge of my own. An Arsenal trophy accumulation binge would be nice, too, and, no, it wouldn't be all the sweeter for the wait.

Blackout Bowl

I watched (or skipped watching) the Superbowl power cut with my finger on the FF button. Same with the half time Beyonce spectacular. The theories are that she had so many backing dancers on the stage, that when they all operated their hairdriers at the same time after the show, they used all the power and so the floodlights went out.

Plainly nonsense, apparently, because they'd already had the world's biggest hairdrier going full pelt at the side of the stage making their already big hair appear huge.

The power cut seemed to inspire the 49ers to a comeback and break the Ravens' concentration sufficiently for the scores to close and the result come into doubt.

The Necks

Why has it taken so long to uncover these guys? Music press and media, you need to do better than this. Experimental, improvised, trance jazz trio. Australian. You know, where all the sports men and women take drugs, according to the tabloid headlines? Where, according to the Barmy Army, “you're only good at swimming”. They produce long, languid, dreamy pieces, acoustic drums, upright bass and piano with some electronics in the mix. Mostly lush and dreamy, with some spikes from more angular, driven sections.