It is the end of May, and we are coming to the end, I assume, of the high-budget, ‘quality’, event-TV dramas that follow the blockbuster repeat series of the winter months. In Britain, this meant that we got to see a lot of dramas that were usually based on real crime cases.

When I moved from the UK to Ireland in 2015/16 my transition in terms of the availability of television was relatively easy. Given that many of the same channels, subscription packages and streaming services span both the UK and Ireland, it felt more that my television viewing was enhanced by the re-introduction of Irish terrestrial broadcast channels such as RTE 1 &

I finally got around to watching the new version of Roots (if you haven’t seen it yet, episodes 2-4 are still available on the IPlayer). The series, even in its new version, still feels monumental: it evidences just how rare it still is to see history told from any other point of view than that of a white, heterosexual man. Unfortunately, despite this feeling of observing television history, I also found myself being quite disappointed.

On January 13th 2017, the Greek Council of State published its decision which found that the law on which the Greek government auction for the television licenses was based contravenes Greece’s Constitution. According to the decision, the law, brought by former State Minister Nikos Pappas, was against Article 15 of the Constitution.

We were working with our first year students on pitches for programme ideas, when I noticed something very strange: my 18-19-year-old first year students knew who Bradley Walsh was. And more surprisingly (and perhaps shockingly) still: they loved him. Don’t get me wrong, I too love Bradley Walsh.

It’s been over a month since the monumental shock that was Brexit as well as its immediate and messy aftermath of public confusion, political backtracking and the general media frenzy that could hardly keep up with the initial developments and shifting agendas.

I am currently suffering from a massive dilemma. The last episode of Undercover (BBC, 2016) is sitting on BOB waiting for me to watch it and I just don’t dare to. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a terrific drama: the pleasure of getting to watch Adrian Lester and Sophie Okonedo in fully fleshed-out parts was something that television doesn’t afford us often.

There’s been quite a bit of trending lately on Facebook about saving the BBC. I’ve done my fair bit of sharing a picture of the wonderful David Attenborough leaping to the broadcaster’s defence. Others have shared the BAFTA speeches which this year were full of praise for the corporation. This is perhaps no surprise since several programmes that won were made for or indeed by the BBC.

Entertainment television programmes help shape the public discourse on politics. As American political communication scholar R. Lance Holbert pointed out, these shows can play a vital part for the public understanding of politics and the public discourse on current issues.

It’s been one of those days. The Christmas holidays had been lurking around the corner, and finally I had some free time on my hands, between the formal end of the academic calendar of 2015, and the big celebration rush that we tend to throw ourselves into, meeting up with family and long-time friends.Free time – priceless. And somewhere, somehow, I had come across an announcement that a new SciFi show would be airing on SyFy;