Personnel on the Forecourt

The First of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

One of the pleasures of coming home after a few days away is seeing what your Personal Video Recorder has chosen to 'tape' in your absence (do you still say 'tape' even though everything's digital these days? I do. Always a sucker for an inaccurate archaism that still adequately conveys the sense of what you're trying to say). I have an Humax PR9200 (I think) and it gained sentience around the time Skynet was supposed to be switched on earlier this year (Google: April 19, apparently) and instead of destroying the human race (that might be still on the cards, the full extent of its plans is not yet certain) it merely picks out good programmes to watch.


Hmm, it's gone for Adam Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Well, it would do, wouldn't it? It is good, though and so it does qualify as my Fifth Telly Recommendation. A bit of Archer on 5 Asterisk, a bit of Bob's Burgers on Ee Four (I've been on Ee Four. Might tell you about that one day...) What exceptional taste the particular artificial intelligence that animates this otherwise everyday piece of electrickery possesses. What else has it gone for?

Oh, here we go. Trying to be wilfully obscure I feel - it's gone for BBC4's top Icelandic sitcom The Night Shift. I don't like to be dictated to by a machine, but I will grudgingly endorse it as the Sixth Telly Recommendation principally for the the character of Georg Bjarnfreðarson as played by Jón Gnarr.

A bit of half-hearted research on t'internet reveals that The Night Shift was succeeded by two sequel series, The Day Shift and The Prison Shift. But most interestingly, there's been a spin-off movie entitled Bjarnfreðarson that upon its release was more popular in Iceland than that Avatar movie thing.

Gnarr's an interesting character himself. A well-known comic actor in Iceland, he moved into politics forming the Best Party with a view to running in Reykjavík's mayoral elections. Among the best party's election promises were Free towels for every spa, a polar bear for the city zoo and a drug free parliament by 2020. It remains to be seen if they will follow up on this or suffer from a Lib Dem style amnesia attack as would you belive it they won and Gnarr has been mayor of Reykjavík since last year. 

And now, in a Look North linky style, I'd better bring my own night shift to an end. It's way past bed time...

More soonliest