I'm visiting my family in Kiruna this weekend (yep, I've passed THAT church). The house is sleeping, but I thought I'd watch something on Youtube first - and like so many other days the last few weeks, I fasted for the same thing.

Before you can comment on that, let me do it first: Yes, I'm late to the party, because I'm hooked on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, for those of you who missed it, it's a British show with math and word games where this is really unimportant. Instead, it's a show where some of Britain's best comedians (and that's saying a lot) have fun and insult each other.

Channel 4 Entertainment regularly posts clips from the show that has been running for over ten years - so there is a lot to take from. All under the direction of Jimmy Carr, who knows a thing or two about sharp satire. I don't know if that's particularly representative, but here's a clip that shows what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vthNOnhfLts

If you like British humor and have missed this like me, then take the opportunity to look through these summary clips. They are many in number and often incredibly funny, and show why the UK in particular has such an incomparably fine humor culture.

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This has been my feel-good watching for a month and I'm not done yet, what do you usually get hooked on Youtube?

During the past week, I've written two tribute articles to two of my favorite consoles, both of which have filled up evenly, namely Playstation 2 and Xbox 360. Today is actually the birthday of another favorite console - something that Sega kindly reminds me of at Threads.

As you of course already understood from the title, it's about the Dreamcast, which was released today 27 years ago. I got my hands on a device quite early on thanks to a friend, which in many ways became my first real contact with Sega. I had played a lot of their games, but they weren't my first-hand consoles. However, it was the Dreamcast for a few fine years.

Of course, there are plenty of nice games I could write about, but now I thought I'd make it difficult for me instead. I want to celebrate the console by telling you about a Konami game of the obscure kind, because it was the odd Japanese experiences that made the Dreamcast what it was.

I don't really know why I got Pop'n Music, and I don't know who told me about it either. But I'm glad I bought it, with the strange controller. We're talking about a game filled to the brim with lovely Japanese music that you then have to press big buttons to the beat of.

It may not sound like much fun, but it was and I and friends could sit for hours trying to get through the hairiest songs (Hamanov remembers with horror), and to this day I love the music from the game.

With that said, hip hip Dreamcast, I'm sorry it didn't turn out to be more years, but I'm happy for the ones we got.

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What is your best Dreamcast memory?

I did like the new Frasier series, but of course I can't even for a second pretend that it was close to the original. And of course, it's hard to reach a sky-high level that was set a long time ago, when the world looked different, the values weren't the same and the actors were young and fresh.

That's why I have a sober view of the reboot of Scrubs, as we're going back to Sacred Heart to save lives alongside John "J.D." Dorian, Christopher Turk, Elliot Reid and Perry Cox - as well as seemingly several other key characters. Everything I've seen and heard from the project is promising, and both Zach Braff and Donald Faison feel razor-sharp and surprisingly youthful to this day.

What I'm hoping for, I don't really know, and we do know that new characters will be introduced, so the old ones don't take up as much space anymore. But really, I just want more of what made the original series so good. Unexpectedly human relationships, things that unfortunately often turn out darker than you would have liked, warmth and of course a lot of razor-sharp humor, often a little over the top.

Now the first teaser has been released via Instagram, and it doesn't really say much more than that the gang is at least not too old. If anything, they look more like doctors now than they did 20 years ago, and I can't really stop myself from feeling that seed of hopefulness sprouting after all... May this be fun.

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Welcome back. Please deliver Scrubs magic now.

The first seven seasons of Shameless (again thanks to the one of you who tipped me off about the series, I don't remember who it was) were truly phenomenal almost all the way through. They were sharp, vulgar, terrible and offered black humor of the best kind - warning for spoilers by the way. 

Apparently, the idea was that the series should have ended around that, because the season really felt like an ending. But... Shameless continued and it became increasingly slower to follow the series. It felt like the creators had completely forgotten what defined the similar characters, personal flaws or shortcomings were neglected (that Ian was bipolar was not noticeable anymore and that Frank's transplanted liver was just allowed to be, while Lip started acting like an idiot).

Every single storyline lasted for a maximum of two episodes after previously being able to last for seasons and everything became more and more unlikely. As the last seasons approached, it began to become almost painful to watch. No characters were recognizable anymore, all the rough scenes were blown away, everything felt more child-friendly, and in the last two seasons, it was extremely clear that they were filmed in connection with the tragic fate of George Floyd and the covid pandemic.

Suddenly, everything became extremely predictable and the characters could start making sensible speeches as if they wanted to educate the viewer and nothing was too obvious to point out. And suddenly Shameless became boring, ostentatious and completely the opposite of how it all started. The only bright spots were the scenes that Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) and Tami Tamietti (Kate Miner) as well as Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) and Mickey Milkovich (Noel Fisher) had together - and the ending. I have to say that the last episode was surprisingly good.

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Feel free to take a look at American Shameless, the series is phenomenal - but after season seven or possibly season nine, you can advantageously step down.

Often I think that video games are treated very stepmotherly in mainstream media and do not get the same visibility as movies or music. It is definitely going in the right direction, however, but it still often becomes strangely awkward, even in large institutions with a lot of money. Like at SVT, whose På Spåret is and remains a favorite for my own part.

That's why I was happy that the first trip on Friday apparently went to Japan somewhere, but where? Apparently, the questioners found this so very difficult that they just went on with questions about Japan in general - where one of the clues was that a certain plumber came from the country. A very large percentage of you reading this, probably know that the plumber must of course be Mario, and that both creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo are based in Kyoto.

Mario must be comparable to the absolute greatest animated movie characters and should certainly not be wasted in this way, and for those who know him, it was rather difficult because the destination was Tokyo. A bit like namedropping clues like Rocky Balboa when the answer isn't Philadelphia, Robocop when the answer isn't Detroit, Sherlock Holmes when the answer isn't London or Kurt Olsson when the answer isn't Gothenburg.

This could have passed as dull and tired from an editorial office that thinks people hardly know who the obscure Mario is, but during the following song question, we would also hear a snippet from a game. My aunt and I looked at each other and immediately exclaimed; "here comes Zelda". Our reasoning was that Mario was mentioned, and then the only other game series you can ask about is Zelda.

And quite rightly. Both cages answered correctly. Even those who said they didn't give a damn because they had heard of Zelda and therefore guessed it. It is really time for the games to advance their positions. Surely there could have been music from Final Fantasy, Sonic or Metal Gear played - to get bands that have a Tokyo connection and that would still have been very easy? Not only let Mario be a broad symbol of Japan when asking for Tokyo and play music from Kyoto (again on the subject of Tokyo) taken from the only other game series that people seem to know about.

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Lazily. Tired. Keep up with gambling but it must stop being treated as an obscure phenomenon.