A trip down Nathan Lane

In reviewing the season finales of three great US imports for Telly Addict this week – Boss, forever, on More4; The Good Wife, for now, on More4; and Modern Family, for now, on Sky Atlantic – it dawned on me that Nathan Lane stole scenes in two out of three of them. What an asset he is, whether playing a gay wedding planner, or a possibly straight court-appointed trustee – how does Broadway operate while he’s away? Also, the grim documentary series on BBC2 Police Under Pressure; and I am proud to present the clip of David Cameron trying to be cool by mentioning Game Of Thrones on Prime Minister’s Questions, courtesy BBC Parliament. Except he said, “Games Of Thrones.” Of course he did.

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Korean opportunities

What interesting connections we can make on this week’s telly on Telly Addict. Brushing Up On … British Tunnels with Danny Baker on BBC4 is essentially a middle-aged man reading out words he has written between some archive clips; Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States on Sky Atlantic (from Showtime in the US) is essentially a middle-aged man reading out words he has written between some archive clips; in Panorama: North Korea Undercover, easily the most talked about TV show of last week, reporter John Sweeney attempts, as does Stone, to get under the skin of a country whose propaganda is all-powerful (and in both cases, Stone and Sweeney risk excommunication from the nation which they criticise); 30 Rock‘s Season 6 finale, on Comedy Central, includes jokes – aired in May 2012 on NBC – about the totalitarian quirks of the North Korean regime; Modern Family, an imported US comedy not given to inter-textual cross-media jokes that are the stock-in-trade of 30 Rock, tries one on for size with a coda based on The Godfather on Sky1; and I also review new ITV three-parter The Ice Cream Girls, which has no link whatsoever with the other shows. Ah well. You can’t join everything up.