The subject of US TV drama’s big critical and commercial hits used to be
police, political or legal procedurals: Hill Street Blues, The West Wing and
LA Law each harvested four Best Drama Emmys in their time. Winning comedies
were once based around families (Everybody Loves Raymond, The Cosby Show) or
friendship groups (Friends, Cheers).

Now, however, the media is as much a part of life as crime, the family or the
local bar, and as such warrants its own televisual genre: the media
procedural. For instance, 2009 audiences are sufficiently self-aware to
admire Mad Men, a drama about an advertising agency, which shows just how
marketing professionals play on the hopes and fears of audiences.

30 Rock, meanwhile, is a television comedy about the making of a television
comedy. Its creator and star, Tina Fey, is a former head writer on Saturday
Night Live, of which 30 Rock is a thinly-veiled version. 30 Rock frequently
squeezes humour from the backstage tension between art and commerce, as head
writer Liz Lemon (Fey) does battle with her corporate-minded boss Jack
Donaghy (Alec Baldwin). It has won the Emmy for Best Comedy three years in a
row.

Among other examples of the media procedural is Entourage, a sitcom about a
friendship group – but one that happens to centre around a young movie star.
It was recently recommissioned for a seventh series. And the latest series
of Curb Your Enthusiasm, about a comedy writer called Larry David (written
by and starring a comedy writer called Larry David), shows him putting
together a reunion episode of Seinfeld, with the Seinfeld cast playing
themselves.

It’s no surprise that critics enjoy television shows about the media, nor that
the Academy’s members vote for dramas and comedies that reflect their lives
behind the scenes. So is this trend a response to the sophistication of
audiences, or does it demonstrate writers’ lack of imagination? Viewers
remain unconvinced by the prize-winners ? Mad Men gets just two million
Americans tuning in each week. At their peaks, ER and Friends each boasted
over three times that number.

The BBC’s Little Dorrit also had a great night, taking seven Emmys. That was a
critical and commercial success ? but then it could hardly claim to
demonstrate greater imagination than the media procedurals: Dickens
published the novel on which it was based in 1857. Tim Walker

Yum and dumber: the new mega-burgers are no joke

For months now the fast food industry has been sticking two salty fingers up
at the recession as empty pockets lead diners to cheaper food. So what do
you do when you’re on to a good thing? You go big, of course. Really big.
The “salad era” prompted by Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super
Size Me is over ? in gloomy times it is grease, not greens that get the
tills ringing.

At McDonald’s, burger lovers are even “supersizing” the
unsupersizable. How do you make a Quarter Pounder bigger? Easy ? slap on
another 38 grams and call it a Third Pounder, above. The gut-busting
sandwich, made of Angus beef, is proving a hit in the US as the chain tries
to bite into the growing market for “posh” burgers.

Burger King has never shied away from promoting the considerable heft of its
products and recently unleashed on its American customers an item called the
Meat’normous Omelet Sandwich.

But for a lunch that threatens not so much to clog ones arteries as to petrify
them we turn to KFC for a new snack so alarming that when it was quietly
trialled in two US states this month many people believed it was a satirical
swipe at the growing trend for bigger, badder burgers. But it’s only too
real: the Double Down Chicken Sandwich encloses two slices of bacon, cheese
and the chain’s “Colonel’s Sauce” not inside two buns but ? wait
for it ? two deep-fried breaded chicken fillets.

Let Hit & Run repeat. That’s a chicken burger with chicken on the outside
(because bread’s waaay too healthy). Fortunately, there are no plans for the
Double Down, the Meat’normous nor even the Third Pounder to make it big on
this side of the Atlantic ? yet. Simon Usborne

Man-ogrammed shoes are the Pitts

Until now, H&R has overlooked Brad Pitt’s frequent but relatively-minor
crimes against fashion. Now, at a Spanish film festival, he repays our
forbearance with this: a pair of “man-ogrammed” evening slippers
with “BP” spelled out in golden frogging. Que?

Let’s rewind to Pitt’s presumed state of mind earlier that evening. “Black
suit, black shirt,” he says, checking his reflection in the hotel
mirror. “No tie. And shoes? Those new ones with my initials on. Mine
and Beatrix Potter’s and Bob Paisley’s and British Petroleum’s. Sweet.”
Brad, Popsy, we’ll spell it out. They are Bad Pumps. A Bit of a Pose. Beyond
Parlous. Susie Rushton

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