Scenes from the Class Struggle in Balboa County

Take 'Battlestar Galactica' and series 3 of 'The Wire' out of the mix, and my confident assertion is that 'Veronica Mars'  (the unspoiled should avoid the site's episode guides on the site as it's a year ahead of the schedule here) is the best drama currently available on Rich Man's Telly.   The premise of an ostensibly peppy yet deeply alienated young blonde who leads a double life at high school doesn't eke out any new terrain, as any major Buffy dude will tell you, but the show manages to beautifully square away its arcs (the series character-defining mysteries) with its standalone episodic structure (tightly plotted cases of the week that often keep a viewer guessing 'til the last act).  It's very sharp on issues of class, as Veronica opines in narration that two kind of people inhabit her hometown of Neptune "millionaires and people who work for millionaires" but it's never really clear who the angels favour here as both sides of the tracks throw up their fair share of heroes and villains.  It blends comedy and occasionally wrenching drama with the lightest of touches and it's really very well-acted with brilliantly-drawn major and minor characters and a real find in Kirsten Bell, a young actor whose brilliant cameo in David Mamet's 'Spartan' first brought her to my notice.  The private eye stuff, absent shamus-beating, is absolutely spot on with plucky sidekicks, surrogate secretaries, secretive millionaires and duplicitous lovers all covering the Tropetown beat.   We're only up to episode three in series one on 112 Living TV and you could do a lot worse than tune in each Sunday evening at about 5.30 or 6 pm.  You have little choice, anyway,  as it seem there's no immediate prospect of a Region 2 DVD release.

Comments

[Fence]

I'm loving Veronica Mars. Got the first season on dvd, WB seem to have released it region free, so if you are considering buying it....

Also, RTE have bought the rights to show it in Ireland, but have ignored my email asking them when they intend to tart showing it.

[Neil]

Certainly thinking about it, Fence, but in the meantime I'm Sky+ing all the eps. RTE are, of course, famously profligate with their imports, preferring to burn off taxpayer-funded shows like 'CSI', 'Gilmore Girls', 'Ed' at ungodly hours, if at all. Anything to stop the 'competition' getting their hands on anything half-decent. Anytime I've mailed TG4 or TV3, I've gotten good, fast responses. In fact, I seem to recall TG4 telling me a year ago that RTE has bought 'VM' and 'Lost'. Expect the former to be shown at 4 am on any given Monday.

[Fence]

Well by the time I got to the end of season 1 I just wasn't prepared to wait anymore, and had my first torrent experience. Now I'm all caught up on the US.