I recently discovered buried book treasure in the vaults of Hulu.com. The Book Group, a dark comedy that ran on Britain's Channel 4 from 2002 to 2003, is a strange and compelling series about a Glasgow book group initially formed because Claire, a lonely American expat, thinks "it's a really good way to meet people, you know, who can... read."
The Book Group is funny and sad and often absurd. I've watched seven of the 12 episodes thus far, trying like hell to focus an objective, critical eye on the show. After all, I have a couple decades of bookseller experience leading, participating in and observing reading group behavior. Suspending disbelief should be impossible. Is there anything worse than watching a TV show about a topic you know too well? I'm sure doctors cringe at ER and cops wince at Law & Order. 
But The Book Group has somehow cracked through my defenses. The unlikely band of readers (and non-readers) that Claire assembles includes Kenny, an injured climber and would-be writer who is "on, not in" his wheelchair; Rab, a gay football (I'll only translate that as soccer this once) groupie and virtual non-reader; Barney, a drug-addicted graduate student; as well as an international trio of footballers' wives: Janice from Scotland, Dirka from Sweden and Fist from Holland.
It's a set-up, I thought during the first episode. It can't work. Initially, everything about the show seems consciously designed for failure. This particular combination of people is beyond unlikely, and they can often be squirm-inducingly hard to sympathize or identify with. But just when I began to feel an air of superiority about something as simple as "identifying with a character," The Book Group called my bluff.
"Claire," Kenny cautions at one point, "Do you think you have to like a character to get something out of a story? Because I think it's a good thing if your author isn't trying to get you to be sympathetic to the main guy."
Bang! What book group isn't formed of an unlikely conglomeration of readers with differing backgrounds, sensibilities, tastes and obsessions? What book group isn't prone to venturing off topic when distractions like food or drink or sex intrude upon the conversation? So I stopped trying to sympathize or identify and simply went along for the ride.
The real gift of this offbeat and apparently long-forgotten series is that somehow, in the midst of all their self-absorption and misbehavior, the group does find a way to make the books matter. And often their meetings are not where this occurs.
A path that begins with their first stilted discussion about On the Road leads through The Alchemist, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Little Engine That Could (a surprisingly evocative choice) and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly. Tossed in for good measure is a fictional work of fiction, Dark Alley by Martin Logan, a bestselling thriller writer with whom Janice has a brief fling. When she chooses his book for the group, Martin agrees to attend but declines the pleasure of meeting anyone face to face.
"No, no, no. I can't sit and talk to a group of readers. No way," he protests, then points to a landing on the second floor of the house. "I'll be up there. I just want to listen."
Big mistake. What follows is a sendup of every author's fears about what their readers might be saying behind their back.
"I liked it," Kenny says of the book. "Nothing special, but it kept you turning the pages."
"Nothing special?" asks Janice. "What did you mean by that, Kenny?"
He digresses: "Did you make this cake, Janice?"
The conversation then turns to poppy seeds and "properly prepared food" while the author suffers in silence upstairs, emerging furiously from hiding only after a late-arriving Claire prefaces her withering analysis of Dark Alley with, "So, did anybody actually like the book?" Martin weakly concludes his self-defense by saying, "You've misunderstood everything."
Also among the more priceless scenes is one of the simplest. Rab, the non-reader, explains to a surprisingly rapt group of professional footballers precisely what happens at these mysterious book group gatherings.
"It's brilliant," he says. "We get a book, right? And in the weeks leading up to the meeting, we read the book, right? And then we go to the meeting and we talk about the book." It's so bloody simple, but you really do have to be there.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)