Gilmore Girls (plus assorted theme tunes)

I'm guessing that you have never seen Gilmore Girls, if you're a UK reader anyway. From what I understand, they put it out on the Hallmark channel, which I didn't even know existed, at lunchtime, which is surely when any sane person is watching Neighbours (or Home and Away, depends what time you have lunch). I would never have heard of it myself if I hadn't had it recommended to me, and the recommendation came from someone I barely knew, online, so I was very suspicious of it. And at first my suspicions appeared to be confirmed. Check out the opening credits, with travesty of a song by the once divine, here irredeemably slushy Carole King:



I know. You want to vomit now, don't you? Quite aside from anything, it reminds me of the Golden Girls opening credits, and nothing should, really, nothing should:



I'll be singing that for days now. Incidentally, I got confused, because I thought that song was in the opening credits for Blossom, but when I YouTubed it it turned out that it was the yet more irritating:



Sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your day.

Anyway, in this case my first impressions were utterly wrong, because Gilmore Girls is brilliant. You'd never guess it. I suspect it has ambitions to be a less edgy Northern Exposure, mixed with Mystic Pizza, with a single parenting twist, and all of the ingredients point to horror on a massive scale: it's set in ultra-quirky small town America, it's about a single woman in her early thirties and her teenage daughter, it's a crossover comedy drama with elements of soap, and it is definitely "heart-warming". YUK. However, and it's a *huge* however, it is brilliantly scripted. Very very fast, very funny, very clever, full of both popular and high culture allusions, and mostly delivered by the rather beautiful and extremely likable Lauren Graham, who I spend a considerable amount of trying to figure out how to become. Additionally to this, the two female leads spend a large proportion of the programme reading high quality literature and eating vast quantities of delicious but fattening food, which is roundly to be encouraged. When was the last time you saw beautiful women permitted to eat on TV? (Nigella excluding.) As for reading, that's unheard of. Plus, as an extra bonus, from season two you can enjoy the presence of a young Milo Ventimiglia, aka Peter Petrelli from Heroes, as a taciturn teen rebel who also reads a lot. Hours of fun to be had figuring out if he's had a nose job, deciding which era hair suits him best, and waiting to see if he will go invisible, fly, or burst into flames.

You will have to take it all with a ladleful of syrup, don't say I didn't warn you. But at least if you get the DVD you can flick past the opening credits.

Oh sorry, did you want me to leave you with a decent theme tune, just to clear the palate? OK then. Never say I'm indifferent to your needs.