TV guide brought to you by Odin’s new official enforcer. (It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.)

David Simon’s new war series Generation Kill starts in the UK on Sunday night. It’s another work of genius from the boy Simon, multi-layered, beautifully shot, meaningful on dozens of levels. Every interaction between characters explores machismo, racism, class, cultural misunderstanding, America’s international role, the nature of institutions, the nature of war, etc etc etc. (And I’m not even halfway through the list.) I’ll risk well-earned mockery for pseudery and say that it’s probably going to be the definitive 21st century war movie.

Which makes it embarrassing to say that – after watching the first episode, I don’t think I can watch any more. I’ll certainly need some recovery time before I try any more episodes. It’s so bleak and feels so genuine that it almost sucked out my will to live. I felt as if I had a mild case of post-traumatic stress syndrome after watching it.

Watch it if you can handle it.