Or, perhaps more seriously, the renewed BSG?

The reason we’ve (mostly) seen that only in comedy is because it is hard to deal with in any other way other than laughing off the cringe. A special kind of schadenfreude, to be sure.

Harder to do in the written word, I think. No examples of it spring to mind (although I’m sure someone wider-read and broader of mind than me will point to examples dating back centuries…did Shakespeare do this? Yeah, he probably did. Ben Johnson did it too, and more frequently, I think).

I’m not sure Lunar Park works as an example, Kelly, since although he lays down – open and wounded – a lot of what he went through, the thrust of the story is wildly escapist horror (catharsis, mostly – a way for the writer to realise how bad things COULD be, or at least rationalise the paranoia that inevitably comes from such a lifestyle). It’s not so much dealing with a catastrophe as creating a constantly growing one that is safe because it didn’t happen.