More Buffy

We're on to season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer now, and in retrospect, it seems amazing that a show based on such a fundamentally realistic and unfantastical concept (see title) should so constantly test the audience's credulity, and always get away with it. In season five there were a whole bunch of medieval knights on horseback (don't ask) chasing down the heroes in a bus, and bringing them to a halt by spearing the front of the bus. Yes, right. And then of course there was the sudden and unapologetic way Buffy was given her teenage sister, Dawn - in spite of the fact that Dawn had not appeared in any of the previous seasons.

Season six hasn't had too many credulity stretchers so far - apart from the audacious Once more, with feeling, AKA the one where they did a musical. There was an explanation for it all, of course, but as Byron said, I wish he would explain his explanation.

I'm loving it all, though I do have one complaint. Halfway through an early episode of season number six, the colour on our television/DVD set completely disappeared. And now we're having to enjoy the rest of the season in black and white. All those finely nuanced greys, and fights in darkened rooms, or in graveyards at midnight, the dodgy characters working in shady nooks and crannies, librarians shuffling through dusty lightless caverns in between brooding and sombre volumes of books - the rich, impressionistic artistic palette on which Joss Whedon works, from shadow black to general pre-dawn gloom - we're missing out on it all.