Everyone except Susan, who discovered Blackpool, is fired. Completely fired. A BBC mystery miniseries in which the actors periodically burst into popular song? Or, more exactly, popular song bursts onto the soundtrack and the actors sing along, like demented British karaoke? This sits right smack on my sweet spot and whispers sweet nothings into my ears. It’s the love child of Dennis Potter and, I dunno, something a lot more lighthearted than Dennis Potter. ...

This is the tenth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face will last as long as someone’s writing the screenplay. Face-punch count: 1. It might have been more but you know, it’s not like Monica’s powers could actually help her in a fight or anything. If only she’d seen some old martial arts footage… oh wait. PITF Index after the cut.

This is the ninth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is the raison d’etre, full stop. Face-punch count: 0. Apparently we’ve escalated to more serious forms of facial violence. PITF Index after the cut.

I just finished watching the first season of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I hadn’t expected brilliance; I’d watched enough of it the first time round to know I was buying some pretty flawed television. It was no Sports Night or even West Wing. But I am a sucker for Sorkin, and in this case I figured I’d get a ton of interesting insight into watching him fail fairly noisily. ...

This is the eight PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is not always successful. Face-punch count: 1, plus an attempted face-punch. Can’t punch what you literally can’t hit. PITF Index after the cut.

This is the seventh PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is what it’s all about. Face-punch count: 2. No quips. Badass episode. PITF Index after the cut.

This is the sixth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is normative behavior. Face-punch count: 4. Counting backhands. PITF Index after the cut.

I paraphrase his remarks on Heroes. What he actually said was “romance isn’t a natural fit for us,” and “We took too long to get to the big-picture story,” and “We made a mistake.’’ I.e.: the Claire storyline sucked, and the meandering around sucked, and season 2 in general has not been good. This is true. I noted a while back that the problem with season 2 was that it’s very much like season 1. That worked for season 1, because they were introducing the world and building our relationships with the characters. But now we have relationships, and we are unhappy to see them neglected while yet more characters are introduced. ...

I’m finding the WGA strike (original) really interesting, for reasons above and beyond the obvious fact that it affects a lot of my entertainment. (Equal link doctrine: here’s the AMPTP home page (original) so you can read up on the other side’s viewpoint.) Perhaps predictably, screenwriters like to write, and that means there’re a lot of screenwriters with blogs, and that means this is going to be a heavily blogged strike. This is only appropriate given that the major sticking point is residual income for Internet-distributed television and film. ...

This is the fifth PITF Index for Season 2 of Heroes, the superhero TV show where punching people in the face is a way to say howdy. Face-punch count: lots. There was a fight and we lost count. PITF Index after the cut.