Artistic Licence: Don’t trust the ratings

One of my favourite television shows is a programme I’ve never seen on television. It’s a buzzy, zeitgeisty US series called Gossip Girl.

While I have watched every one of Gossip Girl’s 18episodes and can dissect its characters’ hairstyles, lifestyles and heartbreaks with an embarrassing degree of knowledge, it has never graced my television screen.

Instead, in common with millions of others, I watch Gossip Girl on my laptop, via file-sharing websites. In ...