Oooh. Look how peeved I am. ITV is proving to be a cruel mistress indeed. Not only is it driving me mad, but it’s also provided me with a piece of real TV gold. This is week, I was concerned that I was going to be completely snobby about ITV and hoped that I would enjoy some of the shows. Sadly, the output has been so bad that it’s not really given me the chance to give it a chance… but then Dexter came along and suddenly the world didn’t seem half as bad.

Right now, I feel like there’s only me and the daytime controller for ITV who know the ins-and-outs of what goes on the screen. However, he doesn’t have to sit through every single show, every single day. That said, the terrible programming has led me to believe that ITVs future might not be as bad as it seems.

Is ITV suffering from what came before Michael Grade? If you look at what is on at the moment, it really doesn’t look like ITV has changed at all since the former BBC man took control. The News at Ten, although relaunched, is more ghastly than ever, throwing journalistic credibility out of the window to actually produce some of the most biased ‘reporting’ I’ve ever seen. Aside from that, is Michael Grade still making changes to the backroom in order to get ITV shipshape and ready to be taken seriously again?

If you look at Rock Rivals, it seems very much like the terrible vacuous stuff of ITV past. These quickly made tittle-tattle-grammes have been the very thing that has blighted the channel over the past few years. Looking forward, Dexter is a sublime import, ready to provide ITV with some much needed credibility. Not only that, but next week, The Fixer starts (more on that later) which looks like a cracking and gritty drama. These shows could be a signal of ITVs intent. Let’s not forget, ITV is the channel that gave us Morse in the past… is ITV to crank up the tension in favour of flashing a g-string?

There’s a long way to go for ITV, there’s no question about that, but if Grade is making changes and clearing out the deadwood, it’s going to take some time. This week’s live-in with ITV has just about done me in, and I’m constantly looking toward Friday night when this all ends. I’m also looking forward to have my girlfriend back to normal who, bizarrely, has probably suffered from all this more than I have. I detach myself to analyse… then get angry… whereas keeps sitting with her head in her hands and shouting at the news bulletins.

Even though this week has been filled with horrendous ‘war-porn’, shallow dramas, whimsy and indentikit scheduling, there’s a seed of something that implies that ITV might just be turning a corner. Either that or Dexter and The Fixer are complete flukes.