Last night was an HBO night: Season premiere of Deadwood and a new episode of Carnivale. Deadwood, of course, was insanely wonderful. It's almost like they've taken the success of the first season as license to go even further, and I don't mean with the coarse language and violence everyone knows the show for (although that's certainly there, and makes The Sopranos look like a tea party). No, it's like the dialogue is even more stylized and highly crafted, like some mutant old west hybrid of Shakespeare and David Mamet.

Carnivale is headed firmly into the final quarter of the season, which hopefully won't be its last (although I'm not holding my breath; ratings have plummeted calamitously... Crap, now David Milch has me talking like that...). This week featured a particularly disturbing tar-and-feathering sequence that I won't soon forget. Definitely like nothing else on TV, that's for sure, which is probably why so few people are watching it.

And they ran an ad for a new series coming this fall: Rome. From the brief clips shown, it looks gorgeous. Can't tell who's in it, don't know who created it, nothing, but it stands more than a chance of being great. (I mean, I'm not a fan of all HBO's shows, but I won't deny their qualities, even if they don't appeal to me.)

And I managed to download a couple of episodes of the New Captain Scarlet TV series, only to discover they won't play on my computer, or on the ones at work. They do, however, play on my DVD player. Well, sort of. One of them plays without sound, which is weird, because you'd think they'd both have that problem... Anyway, so I remain optimistic that I'll be able to watch the New Doctor Who fairly close to its broadcast date. Which is all I really want, really.

And I can't comment on the Captain Scarlet episodes, because I haven't actually watched them yet.