A few months ago, during a few idle moments in charge of the second hand bookstall I occasionally help to run, I happened to pick up a copy of Clive James’s television reviews from the 1970’s. They make for interesting reading, not least because we can look back from thirty years’ distance and see what’s been forgotten and what’s remembered, but also for one of James’s guiding principles- that you can’t judge television as a medium without looking at the whole. The trash as well as the treasure, the hopelessly superficial makeover programmes as well as the worthy classic serials, the well-researched and stimulating documentary against the cheap imported filler. Of course in James’s day it was slightly easier to monitor the whole thing, there being only three channels, two of which were in unofficial but nevertheless cut-throat competition for the loyalty of an audience which still believed in the existence of evenings away from a television set. Nowadays we have a practically infinite number of channels- my Sky Digital box seems to keep making them up from week to week- but I think James’s principle still holds true. The same BBC which can make captivating drama also shows dozens of programmes where people try to make a fortune by selling the junk out of the attic (without remembering why it went in the attic in the first place) to other people who will probably take one look at their purchases when they get them home before sticking them in the cupboard under the stairs and putting it down to experience.

So it struck me as an interesting ongoing project to try to do something in a similar vein today to see what happens- to watch indiscriminately but with discrimination, taking an evening or a week’s output from one of the channels and see what it tells me. There are two basic prongs to this approach; where the major channels are concerned (i.e. those which are trying to provide something like an evening’s entertainment to a general audience), I’m going to watch their prime time output for a solid week and report back on what I find. On the other hand, with some of the niche channels, an evening may be all that’s required to get the general flavour of the channel and what it’s about, without succumbing to the temptation to reach for my credit card and buy some dazzling ornamental monstrosity which just happens to be flavour of the month on QVC. It’s meant as an ongoing project with no real "end" in sight as such; if anything, once I’ve done the rounds of the major channels I may decide to go back to BBC1 and start again. The regrettable fact that I do have other things going on in my life (contrary to popular opinion) also means that it’s a long-haul project, so don’t expect an in-depth dissection next week either. I can’t claim to have an agenda as such, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised, entertained and possibly even shown something I didn’t know before. In any case, I’m approaching things with an open mind, and all things being even, looking forward to it too.