http://www.fox.com/alcatraz/ takes you to Alcatraz, a new series that began on Gringo TV last month.

January 2009. “I am a believer in evolution not revolution.” “Things are changing and its really important that we make sure that as they change, they change for the better and *Dr. Horrible *was just a little bit about that-about putting power in different hands.” Joss Whedon at Comic Con 2008

Passion and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power.

Recent CST blogs have taken up the ‘end of TV theme’, arguing that timeshift viewing, video-on-demand and box-set bingeing is the end of broadcast TV. It’s more complicated than that, surely.

I’ve left Mexico and moved back to my beloved, benighted, lonesome home of LA. Improbably, in balmy temperatures, there are skaters on the Pershing Square rink that I look down on from my loft. It’s some distance from Coyoacán and my neighbor/protestors who saw themselves as the southern wing of Spain’s indignados : The week before I left Mexico City, we had a major earthquake.

Steven Peacock’s recent observation that many academic analyses of television too often become ‘systematic, determined to “solve” the text’s engagement with a specific subject’  is a timely reminder that our evaluation of  television art would do well to avoid treating it like a puzzle.

I had never been a particular fan of Dennis Potter, but this was different. The film noir atmosphere, the unreliable narrator, ambiguous events and characters, the explicit play with the genres of fiction, both popular and elite, the edgy, coruscating dialogue… And the music. It was my first experience of TV where you never quite knew where you were, and that was the point.

“I haven’t anything to be – except this.” Dushane, Top Boy (Channel 4, 31.10 – 3.11.11) Channel 4’s Top Boy ended last night after less than 4 hours of screen-time.

As yet another week on British TV draws to a close I am moved to wonder what has happened to our television industry and my TV watching habits.

Google, that old faithful of lazy scholars undertaking armchair proxy research, tells us that about 280,000 sites offer “Television is Dead”. The expression even has its own site though the title is slightly misleading. “TV is Dead” has a million more and Britain’s Channel 4 has a series.

What to make of Boardwalk Empire ? HBO’s costume drama set in the USA during Prohibition reminds me of one of those fascinating objects that often crop up on Antiques Roadshow . One can admire from afar the detailed textures and evident craft of the thing without having much of a clue as to its function. Everything looks so good – the fabrics, the sculpted light, the big complex stage of the boardwalk itself;