In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.

ABC’s Nashville (2012) and NBC’s *Smash *(2012-13) are two new US serial dramas that have caught my attention over the past year primarily because of the innovative integral role that music and theatrical performance play in both series.

The news of the death of Mick Aston (24 June 2013) came for me with a real sense of loss.

It is often said that we live in Gothic times. In fact, I think that most generations feel this way as the Gothic embodies uncertainty, anxiety and change, emotions and experiences that so often bubble up around us individually and as a society. These unsettling emotions require expression and the Gothic is a perfect outlet.

If horror has a new name on television, then that name is actually something more familiar, something immediately recognizable.

Having spent such a long time working in various ways on ‘television for women’, I realised lately that there are actually relatively few programmes watched together in my heterosexual, two-toddler household. Quality dramas that require investment tend to stack up on the Sky+ recorder and I might watch half of them alone.

One of the major revelations from media studies research came to me, long ago, via David Morley. It was taken from what I think was a German study and related to the use of media in everyday life.  It concerned a man who every morning was in the habit of reading his morning newspaper over breakfast.

The kind of total or pure aesthetic experience I wish to describe here only happened to me (at this pitch of intensity) once in my life before that I can remember, and I’m not sure that this should be grounds for gratitude that it happened at all or regret it didn’t occur more often.

Channel 4, Sunday at 9pm, the slot that gave us Homeland launched a new series The Returned . The  trailer told us that this is “the no.1 French thriller”, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration for a series that had an average audience of less than 1.5 million on Canal+, 23.3% of the subscribership for this subscription service.

‘The United States has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember  .  .  .

As anyone who’s attempted to sit through an entire episode of In the Night Garden will appreciate, my mind tends to wander when I’m watching the bedtime hour on CBeebies with my toddler.