Every so often television manages to liberate extraordinary moments out of programs that lapse too often into the mundane, and I feel enormously privileged to have been present.
Last night had one of those moments, during a program called The White House. No surprise there at that. This American political drama, relegated like most really good television to the 10:30PM slot, has won a number of awards over the years. This moment had me audibly saying Wow! to myself.
There was a different kind of Wow! a couple of weeks ago when I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the same slot on another week day. In fact it was a series of Wows!. That was the episode that turned into a musical due to a malign influence accidentally invoked by one of the characters.
What might have proved to be the biggest generator of Wow! of all of them, a show produced by the same American cable channel that gave the world The Sopranos, HBO, has been denied to the viewers of Western Australia. This program is being shown all over the rest of Australia. So what else is new, right? No doubt we’re too dull-witted, too sun-addled, too uncultured here to appreciate quality television packed full of the Wow! factor.
I am speaking of Six Feet Under, the project Alan Ball went on to write after his amazing success with the movie American Beauty. Instead of this apparent masterpiece, we in the uttermost West get a football program where over-opinionated knuckleheads chat about games that are already over. It’s not even real football, of the kind us ethnics play as well as all the rest of the world. It’s the local aerial and balletic kind, with a limited interest group attached to it.
Note: This post was written a couple of days ago, but could not be posted until now. I am counting the days until I can get a decent second computer, preferably not a secondhand one! Moral: Do not buy used computers.
9:06:50 AM 
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