HOT STREAKS

I am going away for a few days, so this posting is by way of a brief holding operation. I wanted just to record my admiration for two long-running teledramas. I wondered if both Desperate Housewives and Shameless might be outstaying their shared welcome in pushing on to, respectively, a sixth and a seventh series. But both have been in outstanding form lately, each in its own way pulling outrageous stunts with complete confidence and confounding their audiences with clever and – in both cases – very moving resolutions. To turn comedy into tragedy and back again without betraying either form is much harder to do than it looks and the great virtue of both these shows is that the art is concealed by art. Each is now shooting a further series and I for one cannot wait.


Paddy Maguire and Marcia Van Der Camp, a lovely couple