You know, Showtime is giving HBO a run for its money in the high-production-value TV serial department. Since I heard Duchovny won some award, and I'd already been impressed with the quality of Dexter and Weeds, I figured I'd see what Californicaion had to offer. I find that I like it.

Firstly, I do enjoy David Duchovny. As a teenage fan of The X-Files, I always thought it was kind of a bummer that his and Gillian Anderson's careers never took off. Seemed like a lot of talent there in their brainy personai. Duchovny seems quite at home in the role of a self-destructive down and out (though still living quite well) New York City author moved to Hollywood. It's not easy to pull off the intricate mix of sour self-loathing and towering hubris, peppered through with the occasional flashes of authentic charismatic genius that the character requires to not read as a total douchebag. Indeed the actor may be cribbing from his own life more than a little, but regardless it's highly watchable.

Secondly, Natascha McElhone is captivating as the leading lady, which is essential for the whole formula to work. If we don't love her, the whole thing falls apart. Thankfully, we do. Or at least I do, and so I buy the essential premise hook line and sinker. The narrative revolves around this on/off relationship, and it's through this that we see the characters' redeeming aspects as well as their deepest flaws. It's from this love story that the show draws its power. There's an awful lot of fucking, yes, but because at the center of it all is a heartbreakingly jilted romance, the whole achieves a level of emotional sincerity that saves it from the gratuitous precipice on which it sometimes teeters.