Something else for us to hate

When I saw that ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Company) is broadcasting a new series called "The Librarians," I just had to go check out the web site of the show. All I can say is, I hope it gets imported to the US. It looks like it has nasty humor, stereotypes we can all sink our teeth into, and a knockout premise: the straight-laced library director is forced to hire her free-living ex-best friend as Children's Librarian to save her from jail (excuse me, gaol). Here's a quote from the director, just to get our knickers in a knot: "God loves all his children, but especially those who return their books on time."

I always thought that there was a great library-based sitcom just waiting to be produced. When I worked at a branch library in Buffalo in high school and college, I decided that our staff was basically the cast of M*A*S*H. We had the lovable colonel, our branch manager who let us get away with anything in pursuit of higher circulation and more people in the building and who turned a blind eye to a lot of the petty bureaucracy Central handed down. We had Frank and Hot-Lips, the new junior branch assistant, fresh out of library school, who was striving to be perfect and who ended up dating and later marrying one of the student assistants in the branch. (Don't go "yuck!" She was a senior in college when they started dating.) What made them Frank and Hot-Lips was that they didn't want anyone to know they were dating. One day, one of our regulars, a 10-year old terror named Shawn, announced to everyone in the library that she had seen the pair at a basketball game, and they were KISSING! We had the martinet from headquarters, a wily clerk who could make things magically appear as needed, and of course, the guard and I saw ourselves as Hawkeye and Trapper John (pre-BJ days).

Episodes of The Librarians are scheduled to be posted to the ABC website after they're broadcast. I can see myself eating up some bandwidth for this!