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The latest hit from super-producer Shonda Rhimes (Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy) promises to teach us How To Get Away With Murder and then throws in needless complications to make sure we flunk the course.

The first question we might ask of the series is, “Whose murder?” This show does not stint on corpses. Is it the week’s high-profile case being handled by hotshot attorney Annalise Keating (Viola Davis)? Or the murder of sorority girl Lila Stangard, which seems to have been committed by everyone on the University of Pennsylvania-like Middleton campus?

Or is it the murder we keep catching glimpses of in flashbacks that may trigger seizures? This last one is presented like a coy, spastic striptease; by the time we have all the facts our eye muscles could bench-press law books from all the rolling exercise. I suspect that if events unfolded in chronological order instead of arbitrarily flashing forwards and backwards, this show would be a routine murder mystery.

Read our TV column The Binge in BusinessWorld.

We’re off to Udine for the film festival next week, then Vienna and Budapest. We’re always thrilled to be travelling, but we will miss some things we’d been looking forward to.

1. The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Blast. But it’ll still be showing when we get back, or we can watch it there, where it opens later than it does here.

Who does the Avengers’ laundry? Iron Man could just fly through a car wash, but the other costumes look dry clean-only. If they put them in the washing machine, they would shrink…

Toss them in the washer! Toss them in the washer!

2. The start of Game of Thrones Season 5

Would the showrunners have made Grey Worm a more prominent character if Jacob Anderson, who plays him, weren’t so cute? They actually cooked up a relationship angle for an Unsullied. Not that we mind. Also we hear he’s the most fluent at the Valyrian language.

We have fond memories of the Tyrion and Bronn show on the road from Season 1 and are looking forward to the Jaime and Bronn/Tyrion and Jorah shows on the road this season.

3. Marvel’s Daredevil

Promises to erase memory of the movie. We’re glad Marvel’s TV arm got its act together after the Agents of SHIELD debacle. Loved Marvel’s Agent Carter, hope they do another series with Peggy in the 1950s-60s.

By the way we loved the pilot of The Cosmopolitans, Whit Stillman’s Amazon series which could be a sequel to his movies. (Apparently its continued existence is in doubt, which is not surprising but is still dispiriting.) Chloe Sevigny could be playing the same character from Last Days of Disco, Adam Brody could be reprising his role from Damsels in Distress, and we expect Christopher Eigeman to turn up any minute. Back to repeat viewings of Metropolitan and Barcelona.

4. The Pacquiao-Mayweather fight. Specifically, the 28 Days Later emptiness of Manila’s streets while the boxing is on. Then again, you just know there will be a rematch.

The sketch in the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special that caused food to shoot out of our nose: Bill Murray as lounge singer Nick Ocean singing the love theme from Jaws. (Remember his theme from Star Wars?) Here he is, introduced by Maya Rudolph’s spot-on Beyonce.

The musical number that made us shut up and listen: Miley Cyrus singing Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. In the lower register, none of that screeching every pop singer now resorts to. Her country style really works for the song. When she tires of being an easy target, that singer must be taken seriously.

In other music news, here’s an astute analysis of Madonna’s increasingly desperate attempts to get attention: Madonna Kisses Drake. It was recommended by our friend who has just realized his “mother” is fallible.

It’s like having your aunt kiss you at the graduation party. You know, the creepy old one who wears too much makeup and winks at you when you’re in the kitchen… The one who’s unmarried and seems to want to sleep with no one so much as YOU!

I get it Madonna. There’s ageism in the music business. But you can’t complain about it if you don’t ACT your age. You’re acting like a twenty year old. With all these publicity stunts, getting the brain dead press to fawn over you, because you give them access.

Don’t lose your head, Neddy baby. Bring me a sweater, I think winter is coming.

Readers used to own Game of Thrones, or as we fastidiously put it, A Song of Ice and Fire. Having read the books we had an advantage over mere viewers of the HBO series, who were unprepared for the beheading of Eddard Stark, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding, and other traumas in Westeros. Part of the genius of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss is that they make terrible events so much worse. It hurts to watch this series. I know people who are still recovering from the sight of Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, stepping too close to a behemoth who wasn’t quite dead, and getting his head crushed like fruit.

But with the series catching up to the events in the books, the showrunners having jettisoned entire chapters and plotlines that slowed down the action (Goodbye, Lady Stoneheart), it will soon be in uncharted territory. In interviews, Benioff and Weiss have announced that the series will likely end before all the books—we are awaiting the sixth of a projected seven volumes—are published. Meaning Game of Thrones is in a weird existential bind in which the series will spoil the books it is based upon. Here be dragons.

Read our TV column The Binge at BusinessWorld.

On surveillance, security, and the freedom to send out dick-pics.