Spaced out

Joss Whedon is believed to be the first ever third-generation TV writer. In the Fifties, his grampa John Whedon wrote Leave It To Beaver, still earning big syndication bucks today, and in the Sixties The Donna Reed Show. In the Seventies, his dad Tom Whedon wrote Alice, and in the Eighties Benson. And in the Nineties Joss created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel.

Unlike John and Tom, Joss is the first TV writer in the family to be known to the public. He’s not exactly a household name, but he’s more famous than any cast member of Firefly, his space-age TV series to which Serenity is a big-screen sequel, or franchise extension. When he gives TV and radio interviews, the lines are jammed with callers professing to be fully paid-up browncoats. For some reason, ‘browncoats’ always reminds me of Wodehouse’s name for Roderick Spode’s Fascist movement — the Black Shorts.