An open letter

Right Honourable Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London, England

Dear Mr. Blair:

Last night I watched the programme Green Wing on BBC America. It had been advertised as a hospital comedy, similar in tone to the superb American series Scrubs. However, this was a blatant lie, as Scrubs is funny and Green Wing is not. It is, in fact, like a humor Dementor, in that the show seems actively to suck whatever comedic instincts or abilities the actors and scripts may have initially possessed into a Lovecraftian nethervoid. I would go so far as to say that the show was so bad that it came off as an imitation of Scrubs made by someone who cannot tell why the Joe Don Baker film Mitchell is a bad movie and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. is a good one, but instead thinks they're very similar in quality because they are both set in Los Angeles and have car chases in them. Similarly, both Scrubs and Green Wing take place in a hospital and involve set pieces, deliberately nonrealistic behavior, and absurd situations and characters. But on Scrubs such things are accomplished with charm and wit and panache and emotional truth, while on Green Wing they are done with shrieking and stupidity and clumsiness and every single word uttered by every single character on the show rings false, including "the" and "and."

As you are the democratic leader of the United Kingdom, I would like you to give me the hour of my life I wasted on this show back.

I remain, etc. etc.