Author: <span>Carrie</span>

Vampires, why bother?
Published January 29, 2016 by

Vampires, why bother?

Look, everybody, it’s ME!  I’m back.  Okay enough about my blog hiatus.

I’ve been watching vampire movies, and that calls for a post. Helloooooo!!! This year I actually quit watching The Originals and The Vampire Diaries (still love those shows, but who has time?). Of course that didn’t stop me, and I ended up watching Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, and What We Do In The Shadows this very month! Oh – I also watched Vampire Academy, but…that one was mostly while I was folding laundry and doing the dishes and meh – other than Claire Foy, a bit of a letdown.

I have to rank Only Lovers Left Alive at the next-to-bottom of this vamp-pile, because despite Tilda and Tom, the film was booooooring and way too in love with itself. Get over your own perceived hipness, Jim Jarmusch. I love Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, too. Some haunting lonesome forlorn cinematography of rundown nighttime Detroit, but otherwise blahhhh, big effing deal that your vampires can dig on science and poetry. Spooky action at a distance? You’re not impressing me.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night – YES. Not just because we’re talking Persian vampires, not just because it’s got some of the creeeeeeeepiest vampire stalking scenes ever, not just because black and white arty done right –  but because it’s beautifully shot, it’s got a Westside Story gritty glam romance to it, and hey….the awesomeness that is Mozhan Marnò. You can see her in this movie gem on Netflix streaming!

And then there’s What We Do In The Shadows. I didn’t realize until I saw this movie that I wanted a hilarious vampire film. I do! I so do. I don’t think I ever want to see a serious vampire anything ever again. How does it get better than Jemaine Clement as Vladislav the Poker saying “I’m going for a look that I call Dead but Delicious.” Yaahaaahahaaha.

Pretty much everything is outrageously funny in What We Do In The Shadows. Everything. I was giggling and snort-laughing the whole time. Have you ever had roommates? Were they vampires? I guarantee even if you’ve had regular human roommates you will find something to identify with here. And laugh your ass off. And then…slowly…realize you’re watching a reality TV show that’s more human than most.

Wait – I didn’t answer my original question. Vampires – why bother? I don’t know, it’s up to you, what you do in the shadows. “Just leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet.”  “What are you bidding on?”  “I’m bidding on a table.” HAaaaa! Let’s put the dead back in deadpan!

Photo By Screenshot from “Internet Archive” of the movie Dracula (1958) http://www.archive.org/details/HorrorOfDracula-Trailer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11740931

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“Roundheels” published in On Spec magazine
Published November 23, 2015 by

“Roundheels” published in On Spec magazine

I don’t often write short stories, because when I write I’m verbose and have trouble breaking up with my characters. BUT I do dabble in doorstopper novel-writing, and sometimes when I’m knee-deep in a book, characters show up unannounced. That’s pretty much one of the best things in the world, as far as I’m concerned, and it happened with my protagonist Tracy Hawthorne. She’s the alter ego I never knew I had, and my short story “Roundheels” features her in one of her first “paranormal detective” encounters.

Tracy’s not 100% a supernatural PI, she’s a singer and a guitar player and a sailor-mouthed burlesque dancer and somebody I’d love to hang out with. She’s tough and funny and she’s got this gift for tapping into the ethereal plane, so I just let her run with it. She steals the show in two novels I’ve written, and I hope you enjoy her in “Roundheels.” I can now say I’m published in Canada, woohoo! and you can buy the 100th issue of On Spec here (featuring some seriously killer Cthulhu cover art by James F. Beveridge).  I hope you’ll check it out and support this wonderful magazine of speculative fiction.

 

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Spooky Action
Published October 26, 2015 by

Spooky Action

I know, a reading list about scary books in time for Halloween has nothing to do with quantum physics’ spooky action at a distance, but I couldn’t help using it for a post title. Indulge me.

I’m a cruelly picky reader, so putting together a list of recommended reads is always a difficult task for me – especially books with a theme. The following is a selection of novels that fulfilled my threefold hardcore criteria: 1) Couldn’t put it down (or hated pressing pause on the audiobook so I could do necessary self-maintenance like sleeping and showering); 2) Gave me major chills or laughs or both 3) I wanted to be friends with the heroines and heroes of the book.

The Quick There’s all this stupid whingeing scattered over the internets about the “twist” of this book – there’s no twist. It’s a book about vampires. I’m not ruining anything by telling you this. And I insist that it’s one of the best vampire books I’ve read. And you get two poignant love stories, two resourceful, sharpwitted female characters, and some seriously creepy monsters – human and otherwise.

 

 

 

Mayhem – Stephen Crossley’s narration is audiobook listening at its most sublime. He simply is Dr. Bond, and that’s that. A brief digression: Stephen King wrote a fantastic review of the audiobook version of James Ellroy’s novel Blood’s A Rover, telling how he listened to Craig Wasson’s narration while driving and it was soooo damn good it was a privilege to be in a car. That’s how I felt listening to Mayhem – I never wanted to hit the pause button and return to real life. There are plenty of books out there riffing on Jack the Ripper, but this is one of the best – for me, probably due to the supernatural element. A synopsis can’t do justice to the nuances of Mayhem‘s story and cast (yes! there’s a sequel with these wonderful characters). Read it.

London Falling  A cop caper with gritty, snarky dark magic on the streets of modern-day London. A quartet of constables gains some magic mojo enabling them to see ghosts and various other nasties, including an ancient witch obsessed with football (you know, soccer) and murder. Somehow it really rocks, and these coppers are great company.

 

 

 

Midnight Riot aka Rivers of London This is another urban fantasy (of the gore and ghosts and angry Old Gods variety, not fluffy unicorns and fairies) that has humor, horror and heart (most still beating) and a delightful protagonist, PC Peter Grant.  Apparently there’s some controversy about the American version of the book, which I wish I’d known before reading – grab the UK edition if you can. Heck, grab the UK edition of almost anything, as far as I’m concerned.

 

 

 

Murder as a Fine Art  I wasn’t sure about a book that twists history into fiction by using Thomas De Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater) as a revamped fictional hero and would-be Sherlock, but this absolutely worked, and the character of De Quincey’s daugher and protegé Emily is worth the entire read. And say WHAT – the author is David Morrell, who wrote First Blood. Yes, Rambo.

 

Even more suggestions (some I can endorse, some I haven’t read yet) can be found on my goodreads Gaslight list – including the wonderful Lyndsay Faye, Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January books, and Stephen Gallagher’s Sebastien Becker series.

I guess I can include spooky watching herein as well, since Hulu finally got Season 4 of Whitechapel, definitely the strangest and most ghosty of the series, and oh my wailing and lamenting that this show was cancelled. You might also enjoy Copper, Ripper Street, and Elementary. Also my guilty pleasure of late: Witches of East End.

 

“1790-church-gravestones-autumn-leaves – West Virginia – ForestWander” by http://www.ForestWander.com. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 us via Wikimedia Commons

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“Horse Lubber” published at The Tishman Review
Published October 15, 2015 by

“Horse Lubber” published at The Tishman Review

I’m so excited to see one of my poems about Texas published online at The Tishman Review.  I really love this new literary journal and I’m honored to be included in their fourth issue.

I wrote “Horse Lubber” after driving across the Lone Star State in October 2014 on my way to Texarkana.  Texas is like another planet to me, and I say that fondly. Have you experienced Texas? Have you ever seen a Horse Lubber grasshopper? They’re both HUGE.  My poem is small (unusual for me). Please go read it and let me know what you think.

In fact, The Tishman Review has a Readers’ Favorite contest for each issue – with cash prizes! Go HERE to vote for “Horse Lubber” and help me win some $money$. Maybe I will take you out to dinner if I win.

Photograph of Horse Lubber By Jerry Kirkhart from Los Osos, Calif. (Horse Lubber Grasshopper (Taeniopoda eques)) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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2015 Documentary Watch Project: Jackson Hole Wild Festival
Published September 30, 2015 by

2015 Documentary Watch Project: Jackson Hole Wild Festival

Part of my ongoing monthly post series about documentary films I’m watching.

September 25 through October 3 is the Jackson Hole Wild Festival, a bi-annual conference and showcase of wildlife and science films from big-name (ahem…National Geographic) and independent filmmakers. I bought a 5-punch pass for the event, and so far I’ve seen two films, screened at the JH Center for the Arts. Each day has a theme – Big Cats, Oceans, Explore Africa, etc – reminding me that this is a biologically diverse planet with lots to document.

Thin Ice     My first film of the festival. Introduced by a Subaru ad announcing an initiative to reduce all waste to zero in three national parks – Denali, Yosemite, and Grand Teton. And an announcement that Shell had stopped drilling in the Arctic – holy wow. As for the documentary, I really enjoyed it. How do you say you enjoyed a film about Climate Change? I think because it was about the quest to understand the science. I loved the section on how to drill for an ice core more than a mile deep/long, then use sophisticated equipment to melt the ice millimeter by millimeter and measure dust particulates (like carbon) and air bubbles to get data to establish a record of the earth’s climate going back hundreds of thousands of years. I’m currently reading Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers, and coincidentally, I came home after seeing Thin Ice to read Chapter 16, which is all about the climate modeling discussed in the film. It’s fascinating stuff, and the film really shows you the human beings – oceanographers, atmospheric physicists, biologists – who are painstakingly conducting experiments, doing research, testing hypotheses and scrutinizing predictions.

Tiger, Tiger    I wanted to see this film because I am obsessed with apex predators and utterly beautiful places I will probably never visit.  This is a documentary about an incredible man – Dr. Alan Rabinowitz of the nonprofit Panthera – and his love for the majestic Bengal tiger, denizen of the Indian and Bangladeshi coastal mangrove forest known as the Sundarbans. It’s also a film about the people who live in the jungle with these tigers – who revere the tigers, fear them, protect them, and are all too often killed by them. There’s so much here to take in and consider, I wish someone I know would see this film so we could talk about it.

800px-Plos_wilsonFor folks who love documentaries, it’s a great time to be plugged into the interwebs – so many films only a click away. It doesn’t take the place of human interaction though, and I wanted to add that the highlight of my week was seeing sociobiologist and ant expert E. O. Wilson on Monday night. He was interviewed informally by Kirk Johnson, and the whole evening was simply delightful. Wilson is 86 years old and still as witty, compassionate and wise as ever. Leave it to a Jackson Hole audience to ask him hilarious questions; Wilson’s off-the-cuff replies dished it right back (my paraphrased Q&A notes follow).

Q: If you could, would you send us all back to the Paleolithic?

EOW: Do you want to be a big, slimy-skinned, slobbering Labyrinthodont?

Q: If every ant species united against humanity, would they wipe us out?

EOW: Ha, no.

Q: Have you ever eaten a chocolate covered ant?

EOW:  Yes – they’ve got a nice tang to them – that formic acid.

Q: Will insects be a major food source for humans in the future?

EOW: God, I hope not.

Q: What’s your favorite band?

EOW: I’m not much into rock music, but I’ve been listening to the Grateful Dead lately.

 

“Bengal Tiger in Water (13290323163)” by MJ Boswell from Annapolis, Md, USA – Bengal Tiger in Water. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons  

“Plos wilson” by Jim Harrison – PLoS. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons 

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Strange Horizons publishes my poem “Bodega Dunes”
Published September 14, 2015 by

Strange Horizons publishes my poem “Bodega Dunes”

I have a poem in Strange Horizons! This is the best thing ever. Strange Horizons is one of the greatest literary magazines for speculative poetry. I am still pinching myself. I think I’m qualified for membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America now. Cross that off the bucket list.

Last year, actually right about this same time last year – I was on the road from Shelton, Washington to Tucson, Arizona. On my way to the Southwest from a writer’s residency at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, cruising down the California coast, I stopped off for the night at Bodega Dunes Campground – one of the Sonoma Coast State Parks beaches.

B3D08C2B-5285-462F-B576-4FBA90106E22I was traveling alone. The day was grey, surreal, salty. I was trapped at the edge of the earth: the plunging sea, the leaden sky, the lonely beach. There were loud tripped-out campsite parties raging until late in the night, too-bright public restrooms, drunk men with huge Bowie knives yelling about country music, midnight wanderers stumbling past my tent (one of whom was startled by the hulking shadowshape of my bike on top of my car – “Oh my God what the hell is that!!??”). I slept fitfully and had bizarre dreams. Thanks for the memories, Sonoma Coast!

Needless to say, all of this morphed into a poem. Something like HP Lovecraft meets Hilda Doolittle. HP and HD, together on the west coast and in my crazed brain.

You can read “Bodega Dunes” here, if you’re not scared. Also – my reading of the poem will be part of the Strange Horizons podcast later this month. Yes – you can hear me read my own work. I’ll post a link to that when it goes live.

 

Photograph of the Pacific Ocean near Bodega Dunes Campground by me.

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Cheese
Published September 8, 2015 by

Cheese

CHEESE. No, I’m not talking about my sense of humor. Or maybe I am? (We’ll see). Lately I’ve become obsessed by three different cheeses. I say “different”….now, but that might be inaccurate – at least two are from Spain.  Allow me to do a bit ‘o cheesearch; I mean, research, and enlighten you.

First, I love cheese. I’m sorry if you’re a vegan and I hope you won’t hold this post against me, (please feel free to hold a wedge or cube or slice of cheese against me, though – I will gladly take that cheese and eat it). I was actually vegan for a full year, my favorite cookbook ever (EVER) is Veganomicon, and I LOVE nut cheeses like cashew ricotta, but alas I probably do not share most nondairy convictions.

Anyway back to cheese, dairy cheese, goat or sheep or cow milk cheese. I am currently going into debt buying several cheeses and devouring them almost weekly: Manchego, Welsh Cheddar, and Drunken Goat. Let’s break it down cheese by cheese.

Manchego  The Cheese From La Mancha. Almost everybody loves them some Manchego, right? Nutty, buttery, grassy. It’s like if a wedge of Romano and a stick of butter rolled around in a spring field and made a baby. Sheep’s milk – I had no idea I loved it! I’m partial to the Curado age, not too soft, not too dry. Sometimes I get out the Manchego and attempt to set up a fancy cheeseboard with a glass of wine, but usually I just hack off a big chunk and gobble it standing at my kitchen counter.

Drunken Goat Queso de Cabra al Vino! I first discovered this cheese at Cartel in Tucson. What is this magnificence? You say someone soaked a wheel of this luscious goat cheese in a vat of wine? And a small wedge costs as much as my monthly subscription to Daily Burn? Fine, fine, give it to me. Give me the drunken goat cheese! I’ll burn off the fat doing HIIT workouts in the morning.

Collier’s Welsh Cheddar Actually it’s Collier’s POWERFUL Welsh Cheddar, and that’s no lie. This cheese is like a kick in the face. A kick in the face that you will enjoy, my friends. It’s sharp, it’s a knockout, it’s dry but creamy, it’s tangy but toasty. The miners of Wales – the colliers – know what cheddar should be. And the best part? There’s wee crunchy salt crystals in this cheese. How does it get any better? Salt crystals in the cheese.

All these fromages are in your grocery store’s fancy deli section and if they’re not, then I’m really sorry. You should probably stop saving up for a new car or paying off your credit card debt and find a way to buy these cheeses right now. Oh I’m kidding! Do not even get started – you won’t be able to stop. Excuse me I think I still have a piece of Manchego left over from last night’s cheese binge.

 

“Weichkaese SoftCheese” by Eva K. / Eva K. – Eva K. / Eva K.. Licensed under GFDL 1.2 via Wikimedia Commons

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2015 Documentary Watch Project: Room 237
Published August 31, 2015 by

2015 Documentary Watch Project: Room 237

Usually for my documentary watch project I choose flicks based on social, environmental or artistic impact. This time I just reeeaally wanted to see Room 237. Well, I guess this 2013 film falls in the artistic impact category. It’s basically an hour and half or so of commentary on Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining, interspersed with clips, stills, and frame by frame analysis. It was directed by Rodney Ascher, whose upcoming documentary The Nightmare actually interests me more than Room 237, because it’s about sleep paralysis and I’m obsessed with (and often plagued by) that phenomenon.

After two decades of consideration, I’ve decided that The Shining is not only my favorite Stephen King book, but the best he’s written. It works on so many levels – as a terrifying ghost story, a powerful character study of a family destroyed by alcoholism, and a chilling portrait of an innocent boy’s supernatural powers. But – that’s the novel. Stanley Kubrick’s film version is quite different. Usually no matter what, a book is better than its film adaptation. The Shining works for me as movie and novel – I think of them as separate entities. The book haunted me, most particularly because of young Danny’s precognitive visions – so frustratingly muddled and misunderstood because of his age and his inexperience. The movie frightened me – I mean eeeggghhhh – the creepy woman in the tub!!

I’m not a big Kubrick fan, but I don’t think anybody else could have filmed The Shining (or 2001: A Space Odyssey, for that matter) quite so…unnervingly. Seeing The Shining dissected in this documentary confirmed that – for a horror movie junkie like me – it’s always fun to watch slow-mo clips and look (okay, sometimes dig) for symbolism and subliminal images. There’s lots of excited jabbering about the designs in the hotel carpets, numerology digressions (42!!), and some intriguing maps of the (sometimes physically impossible) hotel set.  I kind of agree that a major underlying theme in Kubrick’s film is that of genocide – particularly of Native Americans and Jews, with the main character serving as the archetype of white male insanity and weakness/dominance. In the novel, I felt much more sympathy for Jack Torrance as a human being – abusive and abused, used up and washed out, redeemed in the end. In the movie, we’ve got Jack Nicholson and his crazyballs acting, which in part makes the film so different from the book. There’s a great clip in Room 237 of Nicholson getting into character for the infamous “Heeeeere’s Johnny!!” scene – he’s rampaging around the set grunting and practice-swinging his axe, almost knocking down one of the crew.

I do think that some of the commentators (I don’t know who any of them are and I’m not really interested in knowing – we never see them, we only hear them) went WAY overboard with some pretty laughable semiotics, attributing too much to what I think were simple continuity errors (sure, Kubrick = Genius but that chair wasn’t in the second shot because somebody forgot to put it back, period). I had a good time jumping off the deep end (a poster of a downhill skier somehow looks like a minotaur….i.e. from the hedge maze…okaayyyy); and then I had a good laugh at the wacko discussion of how Kubrick helped fake the Apollo moon landing footage. Whatever!

I enjoyed Room 237 mainly because it’s brimming with examples of patterns and creative symbolism, and pattern recognition is hardwired into my human brain – whether it’s beneficial (survival, creativity) or silly-but-striking (conspiracy theories, superstition – like my fascination with sleep paralysis, known cross-culturally by many names, such as The Old Hag). A nifty illustration of pattern recognition is this clip from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, showing the relationship between the Heike crab, Samurai warriors, and artificial selection – and also a fun opportunity to hear Sagan pronounce the word humans…yooouuumans. Oh, Carl.

 

“Stanley in Snow” by Sgerbic – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons  

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Reading Sam Kean
Published August 24, 2015 by

Reading Sam Kean

Did you ever watch that show Connections with James Burke? I saw a lot of random episodes with my Dad when I was growing up.  I knew I wanted to be a writer but had no idea I might ever want to be a scientist – or if I was smart enough. But I loved that show. You can watch a few episodes from Series 3 on youtube but I remember the first series best – those grainy pre-Instagram images, Burke in his bellbottoms, science history from alternative perspectives – well, all that’s still relevant, yeah? Anyway – I’m reading the books of Sam Kean right now. Devouring them, I should say. I got them all through my library’s ebook borrowing system, Overdrive. Easy and free – I’m sure your library has Overdrive too. I wonder if there’s anything about digital lending libraries of the future in one of those old Connections episodes? Kean’s way of coming at science from anecdotal and often erratically nonlinear angles reminds me a bit of Connections.

I just tackled The Disappearing Spoon. It’s subtitled And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the Periodic Table. Yes – the periodic table of the elements, that boring old thing. I got a C in high school Chemistry. It was the worst grade I ever received in school until the nightmare that was college PreCalculus. C!!! Devastating (Back then; now, who cares? I should have partied more.) but I know why I got a C. Because that class was excruciatingly difficult and equally as dull. The only enjoyable part of Chemistry class was mocking the way our teacher demonstrated how to pour liquids into a beaker.

The Disappearing Spoon is far from boring. Believe me when I say that the periodic table of the elements – the history of its design; the elements themselves; the humans who discovered and studied these building blocks of the universe – is thrilling, strange, and shocking! I found myself forgoing social activities in order to stay home and read this book! It’s like taking a virtual tour of reality and experiencing how freaky-weird reality is, without drugs. I appreciated Kean’s inclusion of etymology, urban myths, humorously conversational tone, and FOOTNOTES. I adore footnotes, and Kean’s do not disappoint – so frequently does he provide those extra little crunchy nuggets to chew on. (Although in the Kindle app on my iPad it’s aggravatingly difficult to tap the teensy weensy asterisk link that takes you to the footnotes page; I felt like I was playing a game every time – and losing – but I liked it!).

My favorite anecdotes range from poor dear poet Robert Lowell’s lithium “cure” to the ruthenium nibs of the world’s best pen to the Bartlett Mountain molybdenum mine in Colorado – there’s so many I need to read the book again. My brain is a sieve…a fun sieve…but still made of holes… or bubbles? Man, the section on bubble science alone in this book was worth buying it instead of borrowing – we go from Donald Glaser’s atomic beer gun to the calcium coves of the English coast to culinary meringues and a scientist who liked taste-testing his own foamy pee! Oh hell yes, bring the crazy, Sam Kean. And that doesn’t even include Ernest Rutherford, zirconium, fluid dynamics, sonar, the calculation of the age of planet Earth, and perhaps most importantly, Mentos and Diet Coke froth-geysers.

Here’s my own (not really Burke-y) connection: just as I finished reading The Disappearing Spoon, I watched Einstein and Eddington. It’s a lovely, poignant film starring two of my favorite actors, Andy Serkis and David Tennant, as the titular scientists. I didn’t realize how much I’d learned from Sam Kean’s book until I began to recognize certain individuals I’d just read about – like Fritz Haber and his deadly legacy of poison gas and explosives, all stemming from his work on nitrogen fertilizers. And of course Sir Arthur Eddington himself, the Quaker who was the first to experimentally prove Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity during the solar eclipse of 1919. Never has a cinematic eclipse been so captivating to me. There’s also a most exciting dinner table demonstration of spacetime curvature! (Though I do believe the script has John Wheeler’s words coming out of Eddington’s mouth in this scene.) Anyway, I highly recommend the movie (it’s on HBOnow right…now).

You might think I’ve abandoned My Darwin Project, but in truth it’s just expanding – as I hoped it would. Sam Kean’s books were a great find for me – I am stumbling across all kinds of books and articles and films along this path. And even returning to some long ago abandoned trails – I swear I’m going to finish The Song of the Dodo before the end of the year. After I read two more Sam Kean books.

 

“Myspace-rück” by h.muller – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

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UK Gold: I heart these shows
Published August 18, 2015 by

UK Gold: I heart these shows

A while back, I stumbled across this AWESOME review column of spectacular television crime drama series. I know a lot of folks who are fans of CSI and NCIS and all those American acronym shows that I can’t really get into. As far as acronyms go, I’m a BBC girl. I like my police procedurals with Brit slang and a cuppa. And now, I find out, I like Danish, Aussie, and Belgian cop shows too! I’m impressed with myself that I’ve watched six of the shows reviewed by Al Lowe in her Wheel of Murder reviews. Or, I just need to get out of the house more often.

I started making my own list of superb shows. The ones that I binge-watched on Sundays during tax seasons long past. The ones that made me jump off the couch and holler when something unbelievable happened to a main character. Shows that shape my own work – writing better dialogue, developing characters with emotional depth, learning new slang, trying for actual plot in my novels.

Right, so – in no particular order, here’s my own hell-yes Rule Britannia list.

Luther  I dare you to find a more fascinating fictional relationship than our hero DCI John Luther and lovable sociopath Alice.

Foyle’s War Pack up your tea cozy and wool knickers, we’re off to the south coast during wartime to solve murders with the unflappable, respectable (and damn sexy) Michael Kitchen.

Line of Duty I stumbled across this on Hulu and I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about it. Excellent cast, some seriously intense scenes.

The Bletchley Circle I found this show because I’m a big fan of Anna Maxwell Martin and I’ll see anything she’s in. So far there’s only two series here, but I so hope there will be more – it’s a cracking good show about a group of brilliant women codebreakers post-WWII who solve mysteries in the face of danger and chauvinism.

Prime Suspect My list isn’t complete without Helen Mirren’s groundbreaking show. I’m bingewatching it on Hulu.

The Fall  Despite being one of those shows that focuses a lot of time on the personal life of a serial killer (eewwww), I was riveted, especially by Gillian Anderson’s steely, shrewd, take-no-shit DSI Stella Gibson. Can’t wait for Season 3.

Whitechapel  I am dying for Series 4 to be available in the US. Rupert Penry-Jones is devastating as uppercrusty, OCD, sweetnatured DI Joe Chandler, hunting Ripper-esque killers in modern-day London.

Life on Mars [Do not watch the American remake.] It doesn’t get much better than a time travel (or is it?) and Manchester detectives mash-up set to a David Bowie soundtrack. Gene Hunt is the only misogynist bastard I adore. Follow up with Ashes to Ashes, quite possibly even better than Life on Mars. Keeley Hawes makes everything sterling (see Line of Duty above).

Torchwood  I might have to confess here that despite being a longtime Doctor Who fan, I love this spinoff more. Because: John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness. And because despite being a sci fi show, it’s a police procedural at heart. With aliens.

Westminster fog – London – UK By George Tsiagalakis (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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