At a recent holiday gathering, a friend turned to another friend, whom I'll call Downloader, and said, 'I need a new show.'
Downloader thought for a second, then recommended Let the Right One In, a Swedish indie vampire movie.
'No,' my first friend said. 'I need a show, a TV show.'
Downloader, after another moment's thought, said: 'OK then, Freaks and Geeks, and you don't even have to BitTorrent it. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.'
I checked out Freaks and Geeks too and can recommend it as an hilarious take on American high school. It's centred around a girl caught between being a 'mathlete' and her new stoner friends. It's like Dazed and Confused, but adapted for TV - in this case by NBC - which cancelled it two-thirds of the way through its first season in 1999, even though it went on to win an Emmy.
But wait a minute. If the show is from a major US network, how is it that it's still on YouTube?