Sick of Politics? Flee to Canada

I know, I know: too damn many election posts lately! What can I say? Writer's strike + big news night + I stayed up until 2 a.m. and need to rationalize the investment of time = you're stuck with it.

Between Super Sunday and Super Tuesday, however, I forgot to link to my brief plug in this week's print TIME for the complete-series set of Slings and Arrows, which hit shelves yesterday. I've recommended the Canadian comedy-drama ("dramedy" suggests something more American and Eli-Stone-y), about the behind-the-scenes at a Stratford-like Shakespeare festival before. But the writer's strike (still on for now) makes this release especially well-timed. A couple episodes a week would fill your Office / 30 Rock vacuum perfectly.

Not that the show's sensibility is quite the same: it's more dark and Larry Sanders-like, but also different from your typical HBO Hollywood satire in that it has an earnest belief in the redemptive value of art that American send-ups of entertainment would reject as naive or quaint. (On our showbiz satires, the question is usually not whether to sell out, but how much--can you make Aquaman and still pull off Medellin?--and how much you can get for it.) It's a poignant and hilarious show, and now you have no excuse not to discover it.