Daria

Monday morning I was flicking through the electronic TV guide for the Viva channel (21 on Freeview) to check if they'd switched to later seasons of South Park from the repeats of the first season. As this was the morning and I couldn't be arsed to use the time jump buttons I simply scrolled through the channel through to 10pm.

It was therefore pure luck that I was paying attention as the word "Daria" flashed past at the 6pm mark. "wait did that say Daria?" Indeed it did and hey now it was the very first episode too. Hell yeah series is damn well linked to record.

I always tried to catch the show when it was on 'normal' TV, but it wasn't well placed and this was before catch-up and recording stuff involved voodoo rituals to work correctly. I could resort to a poor sidebite and say this is "The Simpsons with edge" but that does neither show any justice.

Re-watching it after 11 years how does it stand up? To me it's still as good if not better. It's not a laugh-out-loud show more of a thoughtful smile.

For those who missed out. Daria is a smart non-conformist with a popular dumb-seeming younger sister, a high-powered business mother and a frenetic father. Characters are well-fleshed out including what would be ancillary characters and that's out of the starting gate.

There's so much subtly going on - the self-esteem teacher who can't recall his pupils names. A teacher giving a psychology evaluation test who sarcastically over-emphasises Daria's name when she gets it wrong (Dara) and is corrected before returning to the incorrect version. Daria's mother who upon being informed Daria may have self-esteem issues exclaims "How can you have esteem issues? We're always telling you how great you are what's is wrong with you!"

So much implied at it's simply a show to sit back and enjoy. Oh and we may finally be getting a Region 2 release on DVD