Now we know where the L Word got it's carnival imagery from. Mia Kirshner is supposed to be the new, Jewish, Charlotte Coleman.

The series itself is whatever, particularly sparkly because of her, but otherwise a little unremarkable. Perhaps it's been spoilt by my having watched the stage adaptation in York. Makes me wonder at the source material, since it was adapted by her anyway.

Dylan Moran is great, as is Peter Serafinowichz - I really should go watch Shaun of the Dead. Mark Heap as well.

The fact that she died after, the idea that it might have been so horrible a death, almost beggars belief.

But yes, Sharapova seems particularly alluring getting spanked by Venus. Even when she was being rolled over by Henin she didn't have that same air of grasping determination. It's probably not wrong to think that her appeal is similar to Zhang Ziyi's, which, as I've said before, seems incumbent on her being made to look thwarted and vexed in that very pursed manner.

Speaking of the shapely, I've been watching the much maligned and ill-fated Tabitha - the Bewitched spin-off that died after half a season. I remember watching an episode a long time ago and finding Lisa Hartley no end of fetching. From what I'm seeing now, it's another of those series that rightly has that attraction of ill fate.

Lindsey Davenport playing Kim Clijsters was quite a sight as well.

But yes, Jane Espenson episode, which begs the question who did the very similar episode in Angel. Nanny from Wonderfalls is the featured guest, which turns out well. Their problematic endings are a particular weakness, but the episode was still very good, if only because the interplay of the characters' dialogue was wonderful. And the fluttering flag over the fence. "Either one of you? No."

They're lighting Rachel Nichols differently, more harshly I think, which is probably their assuredly subtle way of signalling her role in the episode.

TorrentSpy is your friend. I'm not sure, but I get the feeling that the ratings did, at least marginally, better. Apparently I was wrong, it's more or less been holding steady at what's considered a non-competitive dismal.

Anyway, here's a list of the shows, most of which can be found searching through TV.com, or sheer ingenuity:

The Loop, Still Life, The Robinsons Lost In Space, Reunion, Just a Phase, Bones, Rocky Point, Prison Break, Supernatural, Everybody Hates Chris, Like Cats and Dogs, Out of Practise.

Torrents for you to torrent with can be found this convenient ISOHunt search results page.

The premise would just sound silly if I told it to you, but if you must you can search for it online, I think the search will really just augment the experience.

I'm telling you, really, watch this, you won't regret it. I haven't watched the subsequent episodes yet, but as with so many things, within the first couple of minutes or seconds, I knew, from that tiny sample, that this is something was wonderful, that I would want to watch, and that I would watch.

This episode wasn't quite as good as the others so far. That said, there are some things that are intensely enjoyable about it, not least Katie Finneran and Adam Baldwin getting very very gratifying moments.

And of course a post cannot go by without my mentioning how lovingly the show presents Rachel Nichols - though in this episode it wasn't quite as fluent, and wasn't quite as rigorous as it has been. Much too much of a concept episode - particularly in establishing the premise of the show - but those are normally the episodes they just have to get out of their system before they move on.

Whatever it is, if you're not already watching it, you must be waiting for me to mercilessly mock you into doing so. Anyway, I like making things just that bit easier, so even if you've missed the first two, you can still catch up.

Edit: Apparently the ratings aren't getting any better, basically getting creamed by Dancing With The Stars, and below even that of the reruns. I don't know what it bodes, but they're showing back to back episodes of it next week, July 6th.

And she really does look like - :D. Less disperse, one would suspect.

It really was quite enjoyable, very squeal-worthy.

All will greatly look forward to Jewel's upcoming hurrah as Kaylee in Serenity.

What's up with "moist"? Particularly fun seeing Jaye wrestling with Heidi. Both are particularly fetching in the period. For those that don't quite get it, Bryan Fuller also did the occasionally good series Dead Like Me.

A post, especially one that mentions Tim Minear, cannot go by without mention of The Inside. As I have now done.

Obviously The Inside has made me much more receptive to my rewatching of Wonderfalls.

I just can't help but not want to over-sell it, but as I said to Su-lin, I *really* like it - I want it to be fluffy so I can hug it - kind of like it. In many ways much more paced and momentous (in the best way possible) than the pilot, perhaps another case of the creator being unable to work beyond his premise - like Joss needing Tim to step in. But yes, strangely for me, I really appreciated the significance of the exchanges, the focus and import. Unfortunately the elusiveness of the case was defeated in an annoyingly trite manner of closing, but I'm sure that's something they can work on. I mean even X-Files knew better than to give you more than you needed. And in this case, they decided to write past the significance - they just can't seem to be happy with the ambivalence and puzzlement, they have to sketch. But it was still a significant try that I really liked. Another one of my very favorite time/perception ellipses/replays. And the manner of her erotic replay. And the spectacle of her screams was thrilling in a way that went beyond gratification.

Rachel Nichol does so very very well, and acts so very very fetchingly. And the glimpses you get to see of the other cast members is wonderfully suggestive. Webb will be their downfall if they don't handle it.

And a very very good teaser, and some of the most evocative and appropriately toned titles I've ever seen. I just wonder how they managed to get the cast to go along with the whole change of premise, and perhaps how they managed to retain any cast at all in it. High School and control would have been a much tougher fit.

She really does do so very well.

Via Bittorrent, via TorrentSpy, via VTV - by forming another tier of bureacracy.

Fox really needs to start double and tripling up, re-airing to seed - they can't let this die, not when its merit rivals that of the OQ, which they so assiduously challenged.

Anyway, that seems to have been the import of the sudden appearance of the CNet banner at the top of the TVTome pages, and now they can kiss their users goodbye.

As far as I'm concerned, epguides.com is a much much better, faster loading, stripped down version of TVTome, and now that I've rediscovered it, it strikes me that I should have moved ages ago.

The best things about epguides is that the episode listings are on the main page, so no navigating through menus to get where you want to go.

This way, you only really have to put up with TV.com when you're looking at episode details, which need not be often. Similarly with going to the main page for news.

epguides.com seems to work with a simple google search, which is more effective that I'd have thought.

My search.ini, when I update it, will put epguides.com in place of the old TVTome search. I'll probably include the TV.com search for completeness.

God damn those CNet bastards.

And so, as Rachel Nichols' pose suggests (her of the wonderful new show The Inside), we are not amused.

Anyway, The Inside is great - it's Executive Produced by Tim Minear, who worked on both Angel and Firefly (and X-Files before that), and also was the guy running Wonderfalls. He wrote my favorite episode of Firefly, Out of Gas, which stands alone wonderfully as a great piece of writing. I'm just hoping that given its summer status, it'll end up more like The OC than Wonderfalls. If not people are gonna start calling Tim "the Reaper" - which would be apt since Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me) was creator of Wonderfalls.

The pilot probably isn't quite out of the park, but I find it wonderful for how much it reads like so much of Tim Minear's work. As far as I'm concerned, he can do very little wrong, or at least very little that I can't forgive.

Rachel Nichols is really superlatively lovely, and made to look so much like a prettier ringer for Jodie Foster. The most pleasant surprises are Adam Baldwin, Jayne from Firefly and Katie Finneran, Jaye's lesbian sister from Wonderfalls.

I mean I almost don't know what to say about how much I want to watch the series, how good I think it'll end up, and really how much I hope it doesn't get canceled. Hopefully Fox will have enough confidence in it that they'll do what they did, and keep repeating it over summer, so that it can build its audience.

Check out the official Fox site, and it's on Fox, Wednesdays 9/8c - best thing you'll see on TV all summer.

If you need convincing about Rachel Nichols, have a look at some lovely pictures of her from Maxim :). Of which my chosen teasers are these: