So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 70) What you should be bingeing on over a long weekend
Hello, and welcome to another abridged version of So What, Who Cares? I apologize for not writing extensively on the six or seven items I'd love to share but I still have 31 items left on the to-do list for my day job, and yes, it's repellent to talk about how OMG!busy one is, but in this case, it's why I'll have to wait until the new year to talk about U.S.'s complicated relationship with golf, the shifting boundaries of the international luxury market, and why 2015 may be the year paternity leave breaks big in managerial circles. Believe, nobody is sorrier about that than I am.
Now let's get to the fun stuff ...
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Your quasi-holiday pop culture note of the day: The BBC is airing a teleplay of the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel Good Omens, and they're releasing new episodes all this week, even on Christmas and Boxing Day. You should listen to this mostly because the voice actors are stellar, and because it's a very skillful adaptation of a story from one medium to another.
It's also an excellent excuse to sidle from streaming radio to streaming TV and spend your holidays binging on British comedy. Good Omens' lead voices, Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap, were both in Spaced, and you can catch the entire series run on Hulu.
(Side note: Julia Deakin is also in both Spaced and Good Omens, and her Spaced role, Marsha, is an excellent last-minute Halloween costume.)
Once you're done with Spaced, move on to Green Wing -- also starring Mark Heap, and also on Hulu. While you're watching you'll note that Michelle Gomez is one of the strangest and most delightful elements on the show, and she's even more out there on The Book Group, which about a Glaswegian book club stocked with WAGs.
So long as you are indulging on a free Hulu British comedy bender, by all means, hit up Spy (starring Darren Boyd, who was also on Green Wing), Whites (another Darren Boyd joint, also featuring Katherine Parkinson from The IT Crowd, which I hope you've already seen, but if not, hop to; series two, episode one is absolutely brilliant) and then wrap up with Campus, which is redeemed solely by its final episode.
Going back to the Good Omens radio play ... here is Neil Gaiman's account of how he and Sir Pratchett wrote Good Omens. I can attest that indeed, this part is true:
We would write HAVE A NICE DOOMSDAY on their books. Or one of us would write BURN THIS BOOK and the other, when he got it, APPLY HOLY MATCH HERE.
Neil Gaiman signed my battered paperback copy of Good Omens with "Burn This Book" in 1997; in 2001, I got Terry Pratchett's "Apply Holy Match Here."
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The happiest of holidays to all of you, dear readers, and I'll see you on the other side of a Hershey's mint truffle kiss binge. I want to thank every one of you who have subscribed to So What, Who Cares?, shared your enthusiasm on Facebook and Twitter, who have linked in blogs and on Metafilter(!!!), and taken time to write and tell me what you think. I am grateful that you spend time reading this and I'll do my best to make that time worthwhile in 2015.
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