Mothers go on, connecting and reaching out.

I love Mother’s Day and I know that Mother’s Day loves me right back—the proof is in the three bunches of flowers before me. Much like their senders used to do, each is jostling for its rightful place in my living room. Some leaves are crushed and crumbled in the battle to take centre stage, others are still as achingly new, as when they first came to bloom.

These guys grow up, go into entertainment, and then react to the presence of an audience as if it’s a form of armed robbery. But female comedy fans exist. We go to shows. In the age of social media, our microphones can be as big as any comic’s.

I tried not to embarrass Sam Morril.

To understand how hard this was, for me, I should start at the beginning. Which was: On April 15, I went to a comedy show. The opener was one Sam Morril. And his opener, as per my notes, went as follows: “My ex-girlfriend never made me wear a condom. That’s huge. She was on the pill.” Pause. “Ambien.”

The fact that nothing has occurred has turned the series fundamentally uninteresting.

I wasn’t aware that Doctor Who/Twilight crossover fic was making its way into the writers’ room, but apparently it has.

Doctor Who came back from a brief hiatus this weekend with a rather unremarkable episode revolving around a plot to steal human minds over wifi networks in order to feed a mysterious client. Its main purpose seemed to be to introduce Clara Oswald as a companion rather than occasional character, though she still hasn’t committed to traveling space and time in his ‘snog box,’ as she so quaintly put it.

Why are television creators in the United States so terrified of the reaper?

One of the most critically acclaimed episodes of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer was season five’s ‘The Body,’ about the death of Buffy and Dawn’s mother Joyce. In a television show where death, mysterious happenings, and horror were weekly events, the characters were incapacitated by the very prosaic, natural, and commonplace death of Joyce; it was jarring, startling, and unlike seemingly everything else in the series, totally natural and utterly irreversible.

I have a funny feeling this will be one roller coaster ride where no seat belts are required.

All those hyphens! You can actually feel the jumps and the starts, no smooth flow here… and I don’t just mean the heading at the top of the page. I’m actually referring to you and me and every other woman who finds herself being given the dubious honour of suddenly answering to the above mentioned title.

Playin Me sees Cooly G staking a place as a fine purveyor of digital soul

Three years after first making a splash on the UK bass music underground with her anthemic “Love Dub,” Cooly G’s debut album has finally arrived on the revered Hyperdub label. While the album format has historically proven a stumbling block for many a dancefloor-focused producer, Hyperdub has made its name off of coherent artist-statement records. Playin Me is no exception to this, though neither does it reach the heights of some of the label’s classic back-catalogue.

For those who want a little more from their television, there’s something profoundly lacking in the US procedural.

Masterpiece Mystery is airing the latest series of Lewis over the month of July, something which has me tickled pink, because I adore UK police procedurals. Meanwhile, US crime shows continue to leave me cold; I know we’ve got a whole slew of them returning in the fall, and I just can’t be bothered to care all that much. Producers and creative teams in both nations approach procedurals radically differently, and I find the UK version much more to my taste.

Far more than the suffragette Lady Sibyl, the working-class Daisy is in dire need of emancipation

Downton Abbey is the best show on television this year, is it not? Or at least, it has the best frocks and hats on television at the moment (sorry Mad Men, you’re so whatever year it was that everyone was into you). There is romance! Hats! It has the glorious Professor MacGongall Maggie Smith! And Harriet Jones, Prime Minister Penelope Wilton! And Susan Death Michelle Dockery! And other people of lesser nerdy significance! And in less explanation pointy things, it’s generally well scripted, acted and a sterling example of how well the English do period upstairs/downstairs drama. Anyway, now that we’ve established how amazing Downton Abbey is (and it really is), here is the bit where I tear it apart and make pretty shapes out of it.

For Britons relying on the public safety net, the message from the Cameron government couldn’t be more clear: Unless you’re famous, don’t expect any government handouts.

The UK has entered a lethal age of austerity, right in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics. As elite athletes from all over the world to descend upon London to compete in the most-watched sporting event of the year, ordinary Britons are dying in their homes and on the streets, and the world is not taking notice. The stark contrast between the nationalistic outlay of cash, energy, and resources for the Olympics and the escalating benefits cuts in the public sector is galling, particularly when considered in the context of the lavish royal wedding earlier this year.

For Britons relying on the public safety net, the message from the Cameron government couldn’t be more clear: Unless you’re famous, don’t expect any government handouts.