Good morning, television friends! This morning I woke up to the sound of rain, and snuggled into my blankets thinking, “That’s so nice! What perfect weather for a Sunday!”

Then I opened my eyes and sat bolt upright, remembering that I left my clothes on the line overnight. Regrets: I have a few. But also, if this is the worst thing that happens to me today, I will have no complaints. Save that I need to pop out and at least rescue the socks I want to wear to work this week.

(The office is so cold that I have to wear knee socks, or else spend the entire day distracted by my ice cold calves. This is, again, a very minor problem, yet it consumes a tremendous amount of my mental and physical energy.)

Let’s watch TV!

Detective Hole, a Netflix adaptation of the hugely successful Scandinoir novels by Jo Nesbø, first crossed my radar because a lot of Americans thought the name was funny.

I have always been taught that it’s rude to make fun of foreign names, even if they sound amusing to Anglophones, so I was struck with a contrarian urge to give the series a go. But even then, I didn’t actually think of it until my flatmate proposed watching it.

Harry Hole (it sounds like “Hu-LEH”) is a detective in the Oslo police force, a semi-functional alcoholic who killed his partner by engaging in a high speed chase while under the influence (dude). As the series opens, he is between binges and cautiously romancing a nice lady and, more importantly, bonding with her son.

He is, in short, your sad, spiritually schlubby yet unspeakably hot Scandinavian anti-hero. (He looks like a younger, blonder Christopher Eccleston, with a six-pack.) As opposed to his conventionally attractive, highly functional, extremely sociopathic colleague and enemy, a corrupt cop played by Joel Kinnaman. Joel is a corrupt cop in a network of corrupt cops who are supplying weapons to the local gangs, in order to trigger violence that will inspire Norway’s politicians to finally let cops carry guns. Cool and normal! Topical! I’m into it!

And then there’s a serial killer who is targeting women.

Between these two plots, we get a dead woman in nearly every single episode. And some dead men, but they don’t get the erotic camera passes. Only Harry Hole can solve this one, but first he has to climb out of the stupour he’s been in since his new partner became the first dead woman.

So this is bad, right? But it’s also great, because somehow no one at Netflix told the Norwegians about the muddy, colourless house style. Oslø and the surrounding countryside is popping with colour, and the blue and orange colour grading that signifies a northern European heatwave is applied with a light touch. Every scene gives us something glorious to look at. The performances are fantastic. It’s just, you know. A lot of cliches spread across nine episodes in a way which leaves me thinking, “Man, you know what I really miss? Department Q.”

The first novel in the series sees Harry being sent to Sydney to help the local cops investigate the murder of a Norwegian citizen, so OBVIOUSLY I am going to read it.

I assume we have two episodes this week because HBO is racing to beat an Emmy deadline again. Why can’t they just premiere the season a few weeks earlier? I am eternally confused.

Anyway. Episode 4 sees Deborah’s earliest work, a sitcom she created with her then-husband (who stole the credit and slept with her sister), being honoured at Paleyfest, while Ava is told that her original script is great, but also too original and unique to actually be made. But if she has any other ideas (which are not too original, and which have something to say, but not too much), she has an open door.

This is classic Hacks: Deborah’s ego and Ava’s ambition collide in a satire of Hollywood and showbiz. Only it’s also season 5 Hacks, so instead of being at odds, they are on the same team, even when Deborah’s new material is more bitter than funny. Ava gently pushes back, but Deb is like, I am saying something important. Yeah, but is it funny? It is not.

Deborah gets her groove back in the most Deborah Vance way possible: she violates her restraining order at Paleyfest, gets arrested, and ends up doing bits on her fellow detainees at the county jail. To be honest, if I was locked up for punching a police horse and some rich lady started cracking wise, I’d probably also punch the rich lady, but hey, Deb pays their bail, buys them breakfast, and remembers that comedy is meant to be funny.

Amidst all this, Ava has figured out her next project: a reboot of Deb’s sitcom, this time about a bunch of Gen Z’s living in the iconic house — with roommates because they can’t afford this house which was once owned by a young married couple. “Downwardly mobile, but funny” is the vibe. I’m into it.

Ep 5 is less of a classic, mostly because Deb goes on Celebrity Amazing Race with her daughter. I definitely watched The Amazing Race once. A decade or so ago. The crossover wasn’t interesting enough to keep me engaged with a storyline I could have predicated a mile away: Deb and DJ make a very bad team, but Deborah learns something about her daughter and comes to respect her, blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, Ava is engaging in a little light forgery in order to get the rights to Deb’s sitcom from her sister. We get to check in on J. Cameron Smith, and learn the origin of Deb’s collection of horrifying chinaware, but this is decidedly Lesser Hacks. Aside from the opening scene, at the hospitality Olympics, where the reality is heightened, the jokes are great and the vibes are solid.

We have reached the stage of the season where Bluesky leftists are critiquing the show according to how well its depiction of revolution conforms to theory.

And I don’t think they are entirely wrong to do so, for reasons I’ll get into shortly, but man, it’s such a joyless, point-missing vector of critique. Although my flatmate did point out that this is how leftists get enrichment in their enclosure, and she’s quite correct and I should not judge. But I’m also in the throes of plotting an adult space opera, which means figuring out my own position on some ethical issues, but also low-key worrying that people are gonna judge my depiction as endorsement.

“Liz,” you’re saying, “no one can judge shit until you actually write it, and then there’s a whole process before anyone who doesn’t know you can read it and make snap judgements on the internet accordingly. Just do the work. And tell me how you feel about this week’s For All Mankind.”

Thank you, that is excellent advice.

What this episode gives us is several hours in a spontaneous revolution (framed as a coup by the powers that be) which arose out of a riot, and the overwhelming impression is of a situation that could easily go very badly — through violence, but also through carelessness or distraction. Or malice.

I absolutely rolled my eyes when Miles says, “I know not all cops are bad,” because, sir, it is 2026. But it is also 2013, and the thing about Miles is that he’s only politically engaged when he is directly affected by an issue. I find this very frustrating, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t enjoy having him as a major lead character, but his attitude is true to his personality as written.

And that trait — of being essentially apolitical until inconvenienced — is true of nearly everyone on Mars, certainly the adult workers. I have to imagine that’s intentional on some level — that Helios and the M6 are deliberately excluding applicants with a history of activism and political engagement. (I don’t think it’s coincidence that Lee and his wife, defectors from North Korea, are almost the only people with a broader sense of ethics.)

So yes, the revolution is depicted as spontaneous and unplanned, and doesn’t even have the preparation that went into the protests and actions of the Civil Rights era, and that ties into a rosy-eyed liberal view of political history, but it’s also a plausible depiction of a series of unplanned events being escalated by people with no long-term plans.

And I’m not just talking about the Marsies here. Lenya going from zero to TREASON and HANGINGS is wild. So is Bragg and his escalation of Dubyaousity and also his plans for a siege, which would be an actual war crime. There are, like, four people in this situation who are thinking beyond the next hour, and unfortunately one of them is Dev. Who is definitely planning something.

I’m not saying the lesson we should be taking from this is that, if you have the chance to beat up a billionaire, you shouldn’t leave him alive. But that’s because I don’t think we should be looking to television for advice on running a revolution.

And that’s the other thing — I keep using the word “revolution”, but no one actually wants to overthrow the system. The Sons and Daughters of Mars just want a say in the decision-making. They are fighting for electoral representation. It’s extremely revolutionary, if your modern history classes began and ended with the American Revolution.