It turns out that Washington isn’t the only place where ideas go to die  .  .  .  Watching the derivative and uninspiring fare served up last week by the networks to woo advertisers, I was flummoxed at the lack of creativity and modernity  .  .  .  I asked one media big shot what he watches.

I have a confession to make.  Recently, on a rare day with the house to myself and nothing to do, I watched Supernatural , Season One.  The entire season.  All twenty-two episodes in one day.  This is not the first time I’ve watched the series, and initially, this blog was going to be about repeat viewing.

I read with interest Christine Geraghty’s blog ‘Reappraising the Television Heroine’ from 6 September. Geraghty notes the prevalence in recent TV drama of the female detective, and she discusses various contemporary television series and their handling of female protagonists. The question she poses at the start of her blog is, what is it I’m looking for in a television heroine? This got me thinking, but not so much about female heroes.

On Monday 30 September at 9pm Sky Living launched The Face, a talent-training format based on modelling. One of the three mentors, Naomi Campbell was in New York on launch night.

As a plethora of PhD comics available for browsing will show, there are common themes that PhD candidates express about the thesis research and writing process. Largely, I am sure I don’t have to inform anyone, these focus on the anxiety that such an overwhelmingly massive undertaking is a task to which the candidate is just not fully equipped.

When Miley Cyrus appeared on the Alan Carr ChattyMan show (13 ^th September, 2013), the narrative and representational markers that define her as a particular star were in obvious play. Miley is immediately sexualised and (playfully, knowingly) comments on her sexualisation.

This week I watched the first episode of Bates Motel , the television spin-off from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)* *which began its UK broadcast on the 12 ^th September.  Of course the show is more accurately described as a prequel as it is set when Norman Bates is a teenager, his mother is still alive and they have just purchased a motel to set up as a new business.

I was initially thinking of calling this post “Is the Age of Quality Television Over?” or even something more ominous like “Is This The End?” but I don’t think that it is, and I’m not ready to play TV-Nostradamus just yet, in spite of whatever signs I might be seeing from the comfort of my living room.

In my first blog after the summer hiatus I was going to write about some of the television I’d been enjoying over the first half of 2013 and in particular the glorious glut of zombies that seemed to be gracing my PVR for the past few months.

Greenpeace organized an Ice Ride on September 15 2013 to rally support for protecting de-territorialized sections of the Arctic from mineral exploitation. The Torygraph has surprisingly good video coverage of the UK-based campaign, which included a vast polar bear puppet, the double-decker-sized Aurora the roarer, who lumbered through London to protest the nefarious activities of Shell and its kind. Listen here for some background.

Aside of devising plotlines engaging enough to both maintain core audiences and entice new viewers, there can be few greater challenges to a television production team than the unexpected departure of regular cast members. The need to fill the resulting character void requires both the reassurance of the familiar and the creative spark of the new, and otherwise invulnerable prime-time programmes can stand or fall as a result of the choices made.