KEY POINTS:
Among the welter of returning shows, the promos promised, hopefully: "It is never too late to get Lost". For some of us it was too late, after a couple of seasons of the increasingly infuriating drama of many questions and no answers.
Lost's most notable feature became the discovery that there is indeed a limit for how long gratification can be delayed.
But perhaps there is a lingering appeal, after all, in the fantasy that in an age of all-pervasive communications it might still be possible to go off the radar. There is comfort in the thought there could exist a desert island where, even though populated by rampaging polar bears and demented "Others", you would simply not know that the world was being terrorised by, yes, yet another round of American Idol auditions.
Can there be anybody left who gets amusement from how that show lures the masses with the dream of superstardom and then showcases the most tragic who are brave enough to give it a shot?
After one of the most protracted scenes of humiliation I think I've ever witnessed in reality telly - the judges howled with laughter for what seemed like an aeon while an auditionee, obviously not the full quid, stood there in mute bewilderment - I gave up in disgust.
Meanwhile, fresh spins are being put on returning shows all over the box as the back-to-school year kicks in. TV2, for instance, is marketing its end of the weekend package as "Beautiful Sunday". Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case it seems to be a byword for those mushy dramas aimed at the set who go in for heart-shaped balloons and cuddly teddy-bears on Valentine's Day.
There are worse ways to spend a lazy hour than with the perennially perky Ugly Betty, however, even if it is just an extended sitcom. Occasionally there's something in the cartoonish scenes or speech-bubble dialogue which comes close to lampooning the world of high fashion and celebrity. But you have to spot such moments through the jungle of cliche gay assistants and bitchy fashion mavens.
Beautiful Sunday continues with returning seasons of medical romance Grey's Anatomy and frontier romance Men in Trees. But even Alaska isn't far enough away to escape that awful trend for saccharin voice-overs spelling out the moral of the shows. Both dramas belong to that school of telly where the scriptwriters have been shopping at the $2 Platitude shop and bought a job lot.
The holidays are over so, naturally, the most interesting American drama now bows out. Big Love has had a second outing as compelling as the first season, as patriarch Bill Henriksen continues trying to spin normality out of his weird world of running his own little polygamist enclave in the shiny American suburbs. It's hard to pick which element of his faith is stronger, belief in the American dream to keep his three families in SUVs and iPods, or his divine right to enjoy a plurality of wives.
Another rarity from this show has been how it delivers its ironies in a way that seems uncontrived, such as those scenes where the non-drinking, non-smoking, non-gambling Mormon and his sweet first wife were negotiating for a gaming business. Or the plight of the infertile couple desperate for a child in a religion that believes family is for all eternity.
And the show has maintained its edge in all those machinations as Bill tries to extricate himself from the hillbilly cult at "the Compound", a gang stickier than Tony Soprano's New Jersey mob.
The end of this sizzling season of Big Love will leave a Big Gap.
