What are the best internet sites for TV fans

A.� Message boards, episode summaries and obsessive homages provide intelligence to viewers who end up knowing the shows better than the producers and they add value to fan culture.

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Television Wihtout Pity (www.televisionwithoutpity.com) rips into shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to ER and Sex in the City. Critics attack everything from the plots and actors' performances to shoes and hairstyles.

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Fan fiction is a growing phenomenon on the net. Hundreds of thousands of original stories featuring favourite television chracters litter cyberspace. They're popular because anything can happen - George Clooney remains in ER and favourite characters can be brought back from oblivion.

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Fan fiction is an abuse of copyright, but because it includes original content, the problem is complex. The Fan Fiction Writers' University (www.writersu.s5.com) has admitted it is probably illegal.

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Q.� Does this actually affect TV series

A.� The sci-fi series Babylon 5 postponed an entire episode until it received a waiver from a fan who had penned a similar story. Given the volume of fan fiction, successful predictions are inevitable - the real Buffy storyline about the vampire Spike falling for Buffy had featured hundreds of times in fan fiction before appearing in the official series.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayers fans were so outraged to learn of her demise they forced producers into a rethink. American viewers saw an episode's closing picture: a gravestone inscribed with the words "She Saved the World a lot". The fan's hysterical online mourning was so great that Joss Whedon, the show's creator, had to break protocol and leak future script developments.

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Sites devoted to Buffy's resurrection have been set up (www.buffy-critic.com), where fans with fast internet connections can download pirate copies of new episodes.

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By Katharine MacColl

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