I know, I know: too damn many election posts lately! What can I say? Writer’s strike + big news night + I stayed up until 2 a.m. and need to rationalize the investment of time = you’re stuck with it.
Between Super Sunday and Super Tuesday, however, I forgot to link to my brief plug in this week’s print TIME for the complete-series set of Slings and Arrows, which hit shelves yesterday. I’ve recommended the Canadian comedy-drama (“dramedy” suggests something more American and Eli-Stone-y), about the behind-the-scenes at a Stratford-like Shakespeare festival before. But the writer’s strike (still on for now) makes this release especially well-timed. A couple episodes a week would fill your Office / 30 Rock vacuum perfectly.
Not that the show’s sensibility is quite the same: it’s more dark and Larry Sanders-like, but also different from your typical HBO Hollywood satire in that it has an earnest belief in the redemptive value of art that American send-ups of entertainment would reject as naive or quaint. (On our showbiz satires, the question is usually not whether to sell out, but how much–can you make Aquaman and still pull off Medellin?–and how much you can get for it.) It’s a poignant and hilarious show, and now you have no excuse not to discover it.