First, The Sopranos.

Postponed from last week because of leaders' debate.

Tony was sat beside a lake. Camera lingered meaningfully over the water.

Plopping and lapping noises on sound sync. You kept expecting FBI frogmen to appear. Carmela said fish were jumping. Camera zoomed out to catch rings on surface. Red herring. Gripped you the whole way through. Great writing. People who watch this say they'll miss it badly when it's gone, and I can see why. But then, most of those people can just watch it again and again on DVD.

Next, Soupy Norman. Postponed from last week because of leaders' debate. Cheap but cheerful. Polish soap opera overdubbed by bunch of Irish comedians to tell story of Buttevant girl who leaves home for Dublin. Hard not to laugh. Not sure if RTE has quota for ethnicminority programming to meet, but if it does, doubtful this qualifies as contribution.

Also watched Battle For The Holy Land: Love Thy Neighbour. Sadly not an ironic reprise of racist sitcom from the '70s with similar name.

Presented by Rod Liddle. Yeeuch.

Actually, he wasn't that bad. Well, I'm leaving. I'm in a forgiving mood.

And that, thanks be to Jesus, is that. No more watching TV I don't want to watch. No more not having the time to commit to programmes I do want to watch.

Oh it's a hard station you have, people will be saying right now.

Yes, yes, it's true: watching TV programmes and then writing about them for money certainly beats, say, stripping asbestos from canteen ceilings for a living. But at least people who strip asbestos from canteen ceilings for a living (and I imagine it's a highly unionised trade) have their spare time. Most of the time I had left over was spent watching TV shows I probably wouldn't have watched if duty hadn't forced me to do so. When you take money out of the equation, how meaningless an existence is that? So I'm looking forward now to catching up on The Sopranos and The West Wing and 24and Prison Break and all those other great shows I've lost touch with over the last couple of years.

At least, I'm trying to convince myself that I am. Truth be told, I'm not really one for flash US drama series. I prefer travelogues on TG4 and documentaries about wars.

It's customary in valedictory articles such as these to offer a treatise on one's 'area'. Well here's my tuppence worth. I think television is terrible. Now, I don't mean television-channel content, which is hit and mainly miss. I mean television the medium. I think it's a force for bad. Since the invention of the television we've been living ever-more passive and vicarious lives. The process has only intensified since the dawning of the multi-channel digital-TV age. The world today is full of similar-seeming people, all stuck to their couches, all steamedpuddings-for-brains, and all wearing Manchester United shirts.

And the powers that be . . . you know, the Freemasons . . . want it that way.

I remember an ad a few years ago for the Sky set of channels.

John Hurt did the voiceover, the most ridiculously overblown voiceover ever written. It went:

"I've seen heroes made and demons conquered and men fall and rise and fall and rise again."

Something like that; I can't remember the exact wording, but it went on and on anyhow, and the idea it tried to generate was that you . . . today's TV viewer with your bewildering choice of stations to watch . . . you're standing in the central reservation of a television superhighway and all these programmes are whizzing by your head and it's hard to keep up with it all but at the same time it's all wonderful, and this somehow constitutes 'a life'.

Yeah right. To paraphrase Alan Partridge, go and visit a local fort or a Victorian folly.

Anyway. Here are some of my favourite TV facts. I'd been dying to squeeze them into my articles but just never found the right opportunities.

1) Remember the guy in the Ferrero Rocher ads who said "excellente" to the ambassador's servant? That was the same guy who played the Nazi with the round spectacles whose face melted when the Virgin Mary flew out of the box and looked him in the eyes in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

2) Remember that Seaquest DSV show from the early '90s? It was like Star Trek, except underwater.

Well, remember the guy who played the sort of young second-incommand? Kind of cocky, with blond hair? Always flicking his fringe up out of his eyes?

Permanent smirk on his face?

Yeah, well, he's dead.

3) Amazingly, the guy who played Catweazle is still alive.

4) Apparently Matthew Corbett can't do Sooty anymore because he's got this condition that makes his fingers cold and stiff.

5) Remember the girl at the start of Bagpuss? Emily, I think her name was. Well that was Peter Firmin's . . . the guy who created Bagpuss . . . that was his actual daughter. Honestly, I find that fact very touching.

Okay, very good. Bye.

Reviewed
The Sopranos, RTE2
Soupy Norman, RTE2
Battle For The Holy Land: Love Thy Neighbour, C4