TV

Just watched The Song of Lunch on BBC iPlayer. Catch it before it disappears. An excellent little mini-film, starring the classic and highly-talented Alan Rickman and the beautiful Emma Thompson, it is based on a poem by Christopher Reid. It’s almost entirely sensuous: based around the sights, the sounds, and the baser senses of revisiting a former lover. I really enjoyed it, and it didn’t bore me for any of its 45 short minutes. I related to many of Alan Rickman’s observations about the little nuances of visiting a restaurant, being a very frequent visitor myself, from the silly ritual of wine to the waiter-watching. A few laugh-out-loud moments in the script combine with the many emotional twangs it evokes to make for a powerful drama.

Super. After the mean folks at Comedy Central stopped allowing streaming of The Daily Show outside the US, it’s now available again, courtesy of Channel 4 Catch Up.

If you’ve never watched it, it’s definitely worth a peek. Jon Stewart is pretty funny, and although it has an obvious leftist bias, it has an even greater bias for ridiculing deserving politicans. Kinda the American Have I Got News For You, without the panel-game element.