Sundays. That famous day when you’re supposed to loaf around and relax. You can go for some drinks down the pub and not hammer them down to blot out that terrible week of work. Sunday is the day to rest, eat lots… go for a gentle stroll and air-out your head. Unless you’ve got kids that is, in which case, it’s probably hell. That’s your own fault though. In many ways, Sunday TV reflects that laid back Sunday head-stir. Gentle political programmes rise in the morning, helping you read through the papers. Something For The Weekend appears to offer throwaway pop-culture, soundtracked by a cameraman who laughs too loud. Countryfile takes a stroll through the hillocks and breathes in the rarified air. Oh, and T4 Sunday does it’s darnedest to make you more angry, nauseous and tense… yet somehow bored… than at any other point in the week.

More Monday Moans can be found here.

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For eight wonderful years in the 1970s the BBC had a tradition of broadcasting a ghost story on Christmas Eve (or thereabouts). You might not think ghost stories are especially Christmassy but for me it was the perfect start to the main event. A late broadcast – as close to midnight as possible – was essential so you could turn off the lights and be creeped out to The Signalman, The Ice House, or A Warning to the Curious before retiring nervously to bed to await the coming of Santa. Between then and now the stories have been repeated sporadically, and more recently BBC Four has steadfastly attempted to revive (or, given the subject, perhaps I should say exhume) the stories, albeit with almost no publicity – I missed this year’s short run for instance, which finished a few days ago.

Now? On Christmas Eve itself? It’s the absolute antithesis of chills. We’re “treated” to wall-to-wall comedy, with BBC Two’s late night schedule filled with Ken Dodd, Blankety Blank, Dawn French and Comedy Connections, BBC Three showing Shrek and multiple reruns of Family Guy, and BBC Four offering a weak rom-com and yet more Dawn French. Hardly the stuff of nightmares is it? Well actually, come to think about it…

It won’t surprise you to know that I spend a lot of my day looking at TV listings. I have to remind myself what I’ve watched and what shows are coming up. Like anyone else, I have my channel preferences. I hover around all the BBC channels, Channel 4, More 4 and after that, it’s usually just curiosity. Many channel seem to be without merit. TMF for example, is just an offshoot of MTV… so of course, that in itself is reason for it’s existence. So what is E4s excuse?

Every time I land on E4s listings I want to scream. On any given day, E4 is showing 4000 episodes of Friends, repeats of Beauty and the Geek and woeful shows like Age of Love. Add to that Skins and Scrubs and you have yourself a very weak line-up indeed. Of all the shows, Scrubs seems to be the only one worth chancing your arm on. However, with it only being occasionally funny, it seems a fair old weight for such an average show… I mean it’s carrying a whole channel! E4 reminds me of a TV rest-home. It’s the place where all those terrible American sitcoms go to die… sadly, they’re being flogged to death… and that’s hardly humane.

Another Monday; another moan, and although it might look as though I’m repeating myself, this week’s diabolic diatribe (or healthy debate, depending on your point of view) is about the news itself, rather than its unwelcome intrusion into regular schedules. An easy target you might say, given the changes in news formats – all for the worse – over the years, but that’s the thing about Mondays…everyone is grateful for a gentle shoo-in to the week and I’m no exception.

So settle back, because whether your pet peeve is standing newscasters, waving arms, “on the spot” reports or insidious replacement of news with opinion, there’s something in here for everyone.

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I caught up with some recorded episodes of The Chase last night. At least, that’s what I tried to do. The first of them seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to start. Twenty minutes to be precise. The reason? An extended news “special” about the flooding. Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not belittling the suffering of the many flooded households, or suggesting that their plight is in any way less important than watching the gogglebox. Just why does the news coverage of those events have to be so ubiquitous and invasive? This was an unscheduled news bulletin with extended on-the-spot coverage less than two hours before we’d be able to see the whole thing again in the scheduled bulletin.

Not only that, but Auntie’s news-mad schedulers then decided that since they were showing some news anyway, they might as well throw in footage of the day’s sporting fixtures too. A bit of football; a minute or so of the Grand Prix. To add insult to injury, already almost twenty minutes late starting the scheduled broadcast, they snuck in a quick trailer for some programme that’s on later in the week! News is already available 24 hours a day on Freeview and even the most dedicated anti-digital viewer is only a couple of hours away from a news bulletin on one channel or other during prime time. How arrogant to behave as if the only news worth watching is BBC News, and to believe that a majority of viewers prefer to have their evening’s entertainment interrupted when they’ll be able to see the exact same recorded coverage later in the evening.