Project Runway: How exactly is Sky One managing to show season three of this already, when it isn't going to air on Bravo in the US until October or November? How much is it going to annoy US viewers if the results are announced in the UK before they're announced in the US?

Psych: Have you noticed that people don't talk about television much on television, even though it's quite a big chunk of many people's conversational lives? While you'll occasionally get a reference to an old show or one that's made up, you very rarely get mentions of current shows, particularly ones on other networks, too. There are exceptions to this or else Toby wouldn't have to struggle with all those 'zonks'. But large numbers of references, as with Friday's Psych, to Nanny 911, Jake and the Fatman, et al, do make you realise those mentions are few and far between.

Burn Notice: Verisimilitude is a hard thing to pull off, even when it's with an area that most people don't know a lot about. Case in point: Burn Notice. It's been trying really hard to be authentic, although with decreasing success each week (IRA 'guerilla'? Oh really?). This week was its biggest major fluff so far, when it referred to 'false flag' as the name for forged ID, when it's actually recruiting people into spying or stealing critical documents, by convincing them that they are working for a friendly government or their own government (cf Wikipedia, which is actually accurate on the subject). Still, it does a good job most of the time.

Interestingly, it appears to be quite high budget for the USA Network, judging by its guest stars: Lucy Lawless this week, I think Richard Schiff is on the way very soon, and we already have Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless in the roster of regulars. Couple that with the cost of filming in Miami, which has gone sky-high thanks to insurance premiums caused by all the hurricanes and we can see that USA is actually putting some effort into it.

Updates and related entries

September 23, 2007: The return of “Things I learned…” in a different format: Questions and Realisations.

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