Oh come on! There's some great stuff on telly! I'm loving the beebs adaptation of 'War and Peace' and Richard Fortey's new series on islands and evolution is terrific (I bet a certain 'starry pete' isn't watching it - he might learn something he doesn't want to know!).

Sometimes you catch a real gem. Near the end of last year I watched, fascinated, a programme in which team of scientists 'dissected' an extremely realistic looking (dead) Tyrannosaurus Rex! Power tools were required and there was gallons of blood and stomach contents etc. It was a brilliant and novel way of teaching its audience about how dinosaurs evolved and how they relate to creatures - like birds, for example - alive today.

And then there was another, more recent, programme, presented by Alice Roberts, about woolly mammoths and what we are learning about them through studying their remains buried in the permafrost of Siberia.

It's not all about evolution and palaeontology, of course! There's plenty of drama and comedy and documentaries covering every subject from history to contemporary social problems. And then there's endless repeats of 'Top Gear' ...