Back in early February, as the first outbreak of COVID-19 swept across the globe and I began encountering nightly news reports detailing the escalating numbers of deaths, I somewhat glibly tweeted that it was time to dig out my box set of 1970s BBC drama Survivors (1975-7) as preparation for the ensuing events.

Ohferfuckssake is it that time again already? [1] Yes, it is. I’m back and you, you, you lucky things lovely people are either giving up around now or going on to see what I’ve been ‘thinking’ about for the last few months.

How are we all getting on, then? I have just heard that London is moving into Tier 2 at the weekend (or last weekend, by the time you read this), but to be honest it won’t make all that much difference to me, as I rarely welcome people across my threshold at the best of times. As to work, I must say the time is flying by – but not always in a positive sense.

This year has seen the passing of two of the principal actors in The Avengers (ITV, 1961-69), Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg.

By Christa Lykke Christensen, member of research project Reaching Young Audiences

‘Our goal’, Ronald D. Moore wrote in the mission statement for his Battlestar Galactica (Universal 2004-9), ‘is nothing else than the reinvention of the science fiction television series’ and so did they all those involved in the production of one of the most important American television dramas.

The afternoon before my Dad died I was at the house with my kids. There was a blackout – we’d noticed because the iPad and computers stalled – but Dad hadn’t moved. There he still sat in his chair, dozing/glancing/dozing in front of the TV. “Dad, has the TV gone off”? I asked? “Oh yeah, I guess so”, he said with a smile.

DWFTH 5 revised for 2021: New call for papers–‘Histories of Women in Film and Television: Then and Now.’ A Hybrid Conference: July 10 – 11, 2021 (virtual and on-campus at Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland) Supported by Women’s Film & Television History Network, this call for papers is made in collaboration with ‘Women and the BBC’, a special themed issue of Critical Studies in Television.

It’s become a bit of a truism that, ‘these are strange and dangerous times’. But I am not referring to Covid. I am writing this on the 29 ^th September, and we have found out that the US president is in that much debt that he cannot borrow anymore locally and is thus indebted to foreign powers. And yet, he is still president.

Our digital TV has just updated its interface, without asking us. This confirms my long-held suspicion that TV tech has just become too complicated for TV users. This is alienating viewers. Many users now concentrate on a narrow band of potential choices, or to abandon TV for other pursuits. A huge number of users, particularly in older age groups, tend to blame themselves for their ‘technological naivete’ or clumsiness.

My wife and I love elephants. They seem to be such caring, gentle creatures. And because of the shaping of their mouths behind their trunks, we graft that onto what we associate with human physiognomy and assume that they’re smiling and so that therefore these are happy animals. So we love them. We have a little elephant of our own.  Well, I say ‘our own’, but he’s a bit more of a time-share really.