Flatting with the Shallow Grave crew

It was somewhere in the 1990s and I had just left home and was looking for my first flat when Shallow Grave came out, and it was smart and stylish and thrilling, and was centred around the kind of place I was dreaming about.

Sure, the people who actually lived in that place were terrible people, but they had a great living space, and walls painted in sharp colours, and there was decent food and wine, and that's the kind of flat I desperately wanted to live in.

Of course, I was a 20-year-old little shit working menial jobs, and the places that were in my price and social range were small and beige, where they weren't covered in mold and sagging posters. And they were all filled with weirdos who weren't as slick and charming as Ewan McGregor's Alex, or as smart and willful as Kerry Fox's Juliet, or as solid and dependable as Christopher Eccleston's David.

I haven't had flatmates in 16 years now, but there's still a part of me that would love to live in a great flat like that. I probably could have done without all that murder and death that took place in the Shallow Grave place, but no flat is ever perfect, and I've probably had worse flatmates.