Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who likes to waffle – especially when carried away with a subject I’m passionate about – I find getting to the point sometimes difficult. The phrase ‘Good things come to those who wait‘ may have been cleverly co-opted by the big stout men few years ago but it’s a tenet I like to live by. I generally find it to work out, too.

I can signpost lots of events in my life through TV Shows – I’m as interesting in TV writing as I am books. The little box in the corner of the room needn’t be the devil – although that entirely depends on your viewing taste, I guess. I’ve my parents and grandmother to thank for my affectation towards Forteana, and I’ll watch most things with a hint of the supernatural about it, or stories wrapped in darkness. First came shows like The Twilight Zone, Eerie Indiana and Dr Who; later The X – Files, Millennium and the daddy of them all, Twin Peaks. TV shows – good ones – offer slow-burn and involvement on a level that film can’t. Not better, per se – but different. You have to live your lives with these people; especially if you tune in week on week as opposed to binge-watching.

True Detective is my latest obsession. If you’ve not seen it, it centres around a murder case investigated by two Louisiana state detectives in the Nineties that has repercussions on their lives as they grow older. Carrying more than a whiff of the occult and and a fist-full of menace throughout, it’s involving stuff and a show that improves if watched at night. It’s finished now, but I can’t recommend it enough. But it’s not a show that you can dive in and out of; you have to be present… be involved.

The same is true of two beers I purposefully chose to enjoy whilst watching it over the last few weeks. First up, a mutant brother to an old favorite; Big Job by St Austell. Taking the already potent Proper Job and throwing in even more hops and strength, Big Job is a beast; weighing in at 7.2% abv yet remains fairly light in touch. The aroma competes with any of the US-inspired IPA’s out there, all tropical fruit and soft red fruit but with that candied-peel sweetness that Proper Job has as a little reminder of its familial roots. The finish could be a little longer, granted – it does make an exit quite cleanly (which isn’t particularly desirable for an IPA), but the latent strength ripples underneath it all, waiting to catch you out.

Staying in the south, Adnam’s Jack Brand Innovation (6.7%abv) was a Silver award winner in 2013’s Stockholm Beer Festival. Pouring burnished gold, the nose transports you to the countryside ; all meadows, wildflowers and malt floor. It’s the malt bill that leads the charge here; a thick, generous body of ginger biscuit and gentle, warming spice. Add a little marmalade to that – and a finish that’s only fleetingly sweet before drying right out with a resinous citrus – and you’ve got a beer you don’t want to rush, lest you miss some of its charms.

Much like the best television.