I just want to jot down something which occurred to me last night which may be useful in future work. I was watching The Simpsons. I rarely watch it these days as I like to watch the news, but the last two or three nights I’ve turned over to watch the simpsons instead. As I was watching, something rather interesting occurred to me: the simpsons exist in a kind of eternal present. It’s quite an old program now: we’ve been watching it, every weekday at about the same time, for almost thirty years, yet the characters do not age. By rights, Bart, Lisa and Maggie should be adults by now, yet they are the same age as when we first met them. At the same time, the series keeps up with the times, existing unageing in an ever-present. In last night’s episode, for example, there were references to mobile phones and Facebook. Thus we see the same strange relationship with time that we see in the Bond films. They too are always set in the present of when each film was made; Bond does not age, but exists perpetually as a virile thirtysomething. In both franchises, we see the same odd time dynamic. Neither changes, and both keep up with the present, being always set ‘now’. Could this help explain why they are both so successful? Can we see something similar anywhere else?