Well, my loves. So my show True Love didn’t get a pilot order. I know. I know. I found out a few weeks ago. It was brutal. We (my, the director Anne Fletcher, the producers Fabrik) spent five months together, writing it and rewriting it and rewriting it and pretend-casting it and moodboarding it and dreaming about it and you know, everything else.

This was me for a few days after:

Poor little True Love. I was supersad. I didn’t cry – hello, no one died, let’s keep shit in perspective – but I lay very still and closed my eyes for quite a long time. I loved every second of developing it. And it got all the way to the end. The network ordered 60 pilot scripts back in October, and I was one of the last to get cut. (This is slightly like being one of the last people to not make the Olympic team, and who gives a damn about that person? But it is strangely comforting.)

It’s not completely dead. Sometimes networks buy other network’s unordered pilots. Fox developed Law & Order, then decided not to make it, so CBS picked it up. (Big mistake, Fox. Big. Huge.) There might be room in the world for a funny, optimistic little dramedy anthology about grown-up, fucked-up fairytales. But then again, there might not be… In the meantime, I’m writing new things. You know how they say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else? It’s like that. But with stories.

Ahhhhhh still laughing.

In case you need a reason to watch Season One and two, here’s ten minutes of Elrich. He’s the best.

I was in a cafe in Brooklyn this morning. There was a song playing that I used to listen to constantly back in London, and it gave me one of those WHOOOSH visceral-emotional-time-travel moments, and I remembered with shocking immediacy 1) the sour milk smell of a terrible ad agency I was working in at the time and 2) the cockishness of the guy I was dating at the time and 3) how great my social life was at the time, so the job and the guy didn’t really matter.

Anyway, I commented to the girl behind the counter (nose ring, Run Lola Run hair, zero capacity for original thought): “oh, I love this song!” She said “yeah I guess it’s new?” and I said “I think it’s from 2002 or 2003. It’s Nightmares On Wax.” And she said “oh I was, like, nine?” Little laugh.

So Fox and I have been on a Shameless binge.

We’d watched it a couple of times before, of course, and we’d watched the UK version when we lived in London, but for some reason, we have become obsessed over the past fortnight. We’re bingeing it every night. We’ve had a few dinners out, and each time part of me thinks ‘this better be a good goddamn meal if I’m missing Shameless’. FOR REAL. It’s that good. So if you don’t know what to do with yourself for the rest of February, well, now you do.

It’s hilarious and dramatic and urgh, just like, fully fucking immersive and consistently brilliant and charming… a perfect show. And it’s surprising. When we’re watching TV or movies or even when I’m reading books, I often turn to Fox and tell him what’s happening next in the plot. It’s so annoying of me. But I can see it coming. It’s so obvious, it’s like I’ve got the episode plot written out right in front of me. Usually I just try to turn that part of my brain off and enjoy the ride – but with Shameless, I don’t have to. I never know what’s coming next.

We have two, or at the most, three weeks to go until we’re fully caught up. I do not know what the hell we are going to do with ourselves when that happens. I guess talk to each other.