Excellently Unwatchable

After watching half of the first part of the 3-part movie made by UK's Channel 4 The Red Riding, I gave up. It's too violent and too bleak. I know it is critically acclaimed and probably very good. Still, there is a limit to what I can take (which seems to fall lower as I become older). Then I went to Netflix and deleted all 3 DVDs from my queue.

A Spanish coworker (the one I watched World Cup final with) mentioned a couple of times to me how uninhabitable England is to him. They all drink endlessly, he said bitterly. Racist and drunk --- I can't stand it, he complained. David Peace (the author of The Red Riding and "the next big thing" in British literature) is certainly no help to improve on this impression. He lived in Istanbul and Tokyo for years and years, but apparently has still not gotten the bleakness of his Yorkshire youth out of his bones.