RVK

OK, Primeval is not great - but it is well-researched: most of the monsters in the show are not known prehistoric creatures, for example, which makes sense given the long gaps in the fossil record. And the rendering is excellent - it's just that the creatures have a limited interaction with the real environment, which I guess is down to budget.

And Primeval could never approach, say, the brain-rotting stench of The Cape. SGU's poor ratings are not a badge of honour, it is a cancelled show!

As for police shows - that's pretty much a US speciality, but the really good ones are under constant threat of cancellation.

I do concede though, while I've frequently thought of British TV lately "damn, there's a lot that's good right now!", this thought has never consciously crossed my mind while watching anything Canadian. Due South, anyone?

Recent movies filmed on digital video have the problem that the exposure time is much less than the frame gap. So action scenes look like flick-books. Gladiator had this issue, as well as most of Michael Mann's recent output. A higher framerate will make action really flow.

I can't speak for Canadian TV but primetime British dramas are generally technically excellent - for instance, this year's Oscar winner for Best Director, Tom Hooper, has directed episodes of Cold Feet, EastEnders and Byker Grove.

Practically nothing that doesn't feature US accents and locations is picked up by the networks - sometimes period co-productions sneak in, as long as there's pretty frocks and no swearing.

You're missing Misfits, for instance, which is the best show on TV...

I've long believed that a civilization's natural, or sensible power structure reflects two things: the communications technology available, and the size of the economic/political structure. Greek city states could have a (slave-owning) democracy, because they were small enough that politically relevant information could travel to most of the citizens fast enough for them to act on a relevant opinion. But as states became empires, the communications became stretched across wide distances, and a more autocratic system had to come into play - ordinary citizens could not get relevant information fast enough to make political choices.

But as we got modern postal services, the telegraph and so on, economic events on one side of a continent became pertinent to people on the other, and they would hear of them in short order. The technology made people feel invested in a nation's politics, so they could, and felt they had a right to, participate.

So I would have said that in today's information society, in the age of TV and Wikileaks, a 5-man dictatorship can't effectively function. Too many people feel too invested in national and world events to permit it without a Soviet-style iron control of channels of information. But the effect of corporate money on what kind of information gets mainstream attention is a whole other question.

The place for this would probably be ratemystartup.com (yes, it exists, no it's not my site)

I used to guzzle milk until I realized the calorific content of what I was chugging. But Tea with milk gives you caffeine, antioxidants and calcium, and hydrates you quite well according to research funded by the tea industry.