CSI 6.15 (Pirates of the Third Reich) is far more than usually grim.

We have just spent a modest sum on replacing our TV.  Been thinking of doing it for ages, so met P at Argos at lunchtime with the idea of taking a new one home, but they only deliver.  Store says you can have it Friday, but after 3 abortive attempts at phoning me (very odd — phone kept ringing, and when I answered, I ended up listening to their hold music) they finally got through and told me it would be more like 10 days before they could deliver.

I was in the mood for a new telly NOW, so we went to a local store this evening to see what was in stock then and there that we could have straight away, and found something ideal in a knock down, ex-display section.  No remote, no manual.  But about half the price of what it would have cost new.  And less than what we paid to Argos at lunchtime.
Struggled to get it into the car — the ex-display model wrapped up in parcel tape and bubble-wrap.  No box.

Plugged it in and turned it on, fingers crossed.  Would it even work?  (It wasn’t on in the shop.)  Would we be able to do anything without its remote?

“Locating channels” it said.  Long pause.  We’ve never tried to get freeview in this house before.

Then it started to list the channels it had found, starting with More4.  That’s got to be a good sign.  It was finding them in a bit of a funny order.

Finally it sorted them into a sensible order for us.  Tuning a telly was never this easy last time I tried.  It used to be a question of flicking through the Radio Times to check you were allocating the right tuning to the right channel — “This looks like BBC1, no wait, adverts, that can’t be right.”

But no.  Now the TV does it for you.  It started off with BBC1,2 ITV, Channel 4, Five, then diversified. Four BBC TVs.  ITV 1 – 4.  Channel 4.  More4.  E4.  Even E4+1.  Shopping channels, auction channels, travel channels.  News24 and Sky News.  BBC Parliament, oh joy!  More channels than you could ever watch, even if you did nothing else.  And then further through the radio stations too.  We spent a happy hour channel hopping from BBC1 all the way through to a boggling minute spent on Christian Public Radio.

Then we finally watched a rented DVD I’ve been hanging on to for about four months waiting for just this day.  It didn’t seem right to watch Sleepy Hollow on a 14″ fuzzy portable, with the picture taking a circuitous route to the telly through the scart lead on the VCR and finally in through the tuner.

*Sigh*.  TV heaven.   Post Sleepy Hollow, we watched a bit of real telly.  The Thick of It.  Titty Bang Bang on BBC3 (what a disappointment.  It’s no Monkeydust, is it?).  A very sparsely populated House of Commons considering the Government of Wales Bill.

I probably won’t watch any more TV for months now.

Must remember to phone Argos tomorrow and cancel the delivery.

I’m quite advanced now with Lost and I have a sneaking feeling I’ll have watched the entire first season before I turn in later this morning.

Nitroglycerin is extremely temperamental.

It’s had some interesting moments and I’m intrigued to know whether it’s going to answer any of its own questions. Much in the mold of 24, you get the idea that they weren’t always sure they knew where they were going at any given point, and the tension between episodes was more important than any narrative coherence.

I’m half persuaded that I want a ‘The Numbers Are Bad’ t-shirt

Charlie: Gunpowder?
Sayeed: This is not going to be pleasant

Well, that was unexpected.