But when you suddenly realise that TV shows that you’ve been watching and enjoying are swirling around the toilet bowl on their way down the drain, it’s still a terribly depressing moment. No matter how many times you experience it.

The Fonz - the coolest man alive, but also the original shark-jumper

Here at Botheration Towers we’re engaged in a more or less permanent project to watch on DVD those cult shows that we didn’t get to see on TV at the time, or just haven’t seen recently enough - so far we’ve knocked off the whole 12 seasons of Buffy and Angel, the glorious sole season of Firefly (several times), four seasons of The X-Files, four seasons of Hustle; and revisited two of the RTD seasons of Doctor Who and both seasons of Life on Mars. And three seasons of Alias - nearly.

* Alias spoilers apply from this point on, so don’t read any further if you wish to remain in ignorance.

This, of course, involves paying for them, whether by buying the box sets or taking out a DVD subscription. Admittedly this is a fairly negligible sum but, by the time you’ve rented as many as six discs in order to view a complete season, then you like to think there’s at least notional value for money.

So far, Alias has been a gas. Plus points include a fantastic ensemble cast including all the ‘older generation’ actors who generally make the youngsters work very hard to retain the spotlight, a nod backwards to classic caper fiction including Modesty Blaise (cue Quentin Tarantino), James Bond and even The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a writing philosophy that sees enough suspense and plot development for a whole season of many shows crammed into one episode, and the ability to combine genres in a fashion that’s practically Whedonesque.

To those people that condemn it as shallow, vapid or silly - I say, what did you expect, Dostoevsky? With this show, you have a pact with the writers, even more so than usual. You want breathless, thrilling entertainment and they provide it in spades. To switch on for Alias and then to look for exacting verisimilitude and gritty believability is only to sell yourself short. Far better to go along for the ride and scream loudly as the rollercoaster crests its high point and starts to plunge.

I have this great mental image of how the initial pitch must have gone: “Just imagine how cool it would be if there was this CIA agent, and this KGB agent, and they had this daughter who they trained to be a super-spy…” And so the resources of two of the world’s largest intelligence agencies are devoted, not to universal peace or counter-terrorism, but to resolving the Bristow family drama with all its myriad lovers and revelations and betrayals and bit-part players and sub-plots involving trivial things like the continued survival of the human race.

Things during the third season were going pretty well - the premise set up at the end of season two was compelling, and we were as keen as anyone to find out what had happened during the lost two years of Sydney’s life. It even takes some dramatic risks during the dream sequences when Sydney is trying to recover her memories of that time. But the first bum note was struck at the season mid-point, Full Disclosure, when Lauren Reed, the wife of Michael Vaughn, is revealed to be a double agent.

While her performance either side of this revelation is impeccable, the idea that the character who took part in the earlier episode Breaking Point could credibly be the same one that sees the season out is just impossible to swallow. Before-Lauren and After-Lauren are two different characters, with different motivations and can’t credibly be reconciled into the same narrative.

But that we can just about forgive. After all, there’s plenty to keep us watching, not least the new revelations in the long-running Rambaldi saga, which might be described as the show’s myth arc in the sense that X-Files viewers would understand that term.

And then we arrive at episodes 19 and 20 - Hourglass and Blood Ties. Where to start with what goes wrong? Well, first of all Arvin Sloane is executed, properly, by the government, using a lethal injection, in front of many witnesses and he is wheeled out in a body bag. This is powerful stuff - Ron Rifkin is a superbly skilful actor, especially when providing Sloane with that face that makes him look like a very wise and sad orang-utan, and this death scene is a powerful tool in his hands.

Sloane (he of The Alliance, The Covenant, The Trust) is also one of the few TV villains to truly have read the Evil Overlord’s Handbook - he rarely makes Monster of the Week-level errors of the sort exploited in every single episode of Doctor Who - which is why he has survived for three seasons so far, and the scope of his ambition is terrifying, nothing less than eternal life as we learned in an earlier episode.

But, guess what? He isn’t really dead. No, sir. Jack, playing Jesus Christ to Sloane’s Lazarus (after practising on Ricky Gervais a few episodes earlier), revives him with a tiny nod to the writers’ convention that says you have to do some groundwork before pulling a stunt like this.

As one reviewer of the season says: “I wouldn’t even count on Sydney’s dead fiancé from the pilot really being dead. If you take away the consequences of characters dying, then you may as well not kill them in the first place.” It actually makes me feel slightly ill that the last episode of this season is called Resurrection.

Next comes a moment that will truly turn Buffy fans cold: “Ohmigosh, it seems I have a long-lost sister that I never knew about before.” Been there, done that, signed the anti-Dawn online petition. No, no, no, no. This is creative bankruptcy on the part of the writers.

It is an absolute and unbreakable convention of all suspense fiction that the person whodunnit (or, in this case, is the secret key to the mystery that has been building up for three seasons) has to be on camera at least once, however briefly, in the time before they are introduced. This does not happen. Fail. And, excuse me, the Argentine secret service?

After this I feel so jaded that I can barely lift my head off the keyboard to continue. It had been clear since about four episodes into the first season that Sloane would one day shape up to claim to be Sydney’s father. It is hard to see how that threat could have been made real because the Sydney/Jack relationship is too central to the series to be undermined like this. However, to piss three season’s worth of development up the wall in half an hour of creative madness is a grave disservice to just about anything and anyone you want to name.

Even though I have long been an advocate of avoiding the temptation to pick holes in the plots of Alias because it’s usually far more satisfying to relax and go along with them, I can’t be doing with this nonsense. So, we’re kind of thinking, thanks for the ride. It’s been fantastic - but probably only goes downhill from here.

And each of the 10 or 12 DVDs that make up the remaining two series are going to have to be rented at a couple of quid a pop and that’s time and money that could profitably be spent on The X-Files (also shortly to go down the crapper, I know), The West Wing, or even Ashes to Ashes which we’re starting to get an urge to watch now the hype has died down and Matthew Graham has crawled back under his stone.

We never regretted sticking with Buffy right to the end. But that was something pretty special. Alias has been great this far, but it might just have come to the end of its run.

Geoffrey Perkins tribute to feature in British Comedy Awards show

This year’s British Comedy Awards on ITV1 will feature a tribute to the late comedy producer, writer and performer Geoffrey Perkins.

Perkins, who died on August 29, worked on some of the most popular comedies from the past three decades, including I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, Spitting Image, The Fast Show and Have I Got News for You.

He was a familiar face at the annual British Comedy Awards ceremony and a number of the shows he executive produced won prizes down the years, including The Catherine Tate Show and Father Ted.

It is thought the celebration of his life will feature clips and tributes from former colleagues such as Rowan Atkinson and Harry Enfield. Read full story here…

She explains how a website URL ran underneath the quote and, when she visited the site, she was informed how as a non-believer she would be “condemned to everlasting separation from God and then spend all eternity in torment in hell”.

And that seemed a bit much, on the way to work.

She says that, unsettled that religious groups were allowed to advertise websites warning the non-religious that they faced torture at the end of their lives, she conceived a comment piece for The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, called Atheists - Gimme Five.

She proposed a fundraising exercise in which all the atheists reading the piece donated a fiver - enough to pay for a bus ad in London reading: “There’s probably no God - now stop worrying, and enjoy your life.” It was a bit more complicated than that - but now the campaign is up and running. It took 10 hours for it to reach its £5,500 target and is nearly at £75,000 as I write.

If you donate a fiver then I can’t promise eternal life - but I can say that you’ll get a very strong feeling of satisfaction and of solidarity with people like you who may believe in leading an ethical life but not a religious one. Or with everyone who wants to make a stand against the incursion of religious belief into areas of life like politics, education and healthcare (and even public transport) where it has no place.

You can donate via the widget below, which also shows how the campaign is going. Bear in mind this is actual money collected, not funds pledged:

And, by the way it’s getting up the noses of wingnuts, god-botherers and the sniffier members of the commentariat, it’s already done its job and is definitely worth every single penny.

I’ll end with a quote from the inestimable Terry Pratchett that the British Humanist Association is using to help explain this campaign. He says:

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”

The Millerites were a sect of 19th-century American baptists convinced that Jesus was set to turn up on this day in 1844. Hindsight, of course, is a great thing and the day became known as The Great Disappointment.

This from Wikipedia’s anniversaries for October 22:

The Great Disappointment

The sun rose on the morning of October 23 like any other day, and October 22, that day of great hope and promise was for the Millerites, the day of greatest disappointment. Henry Emmons, a Millerite, later wrote,

“I waited all Tuesday [October 22] and dear Jesus did not come;– I waited all the forenoon of Wednesday, and was well in body as I ever was, but after 12 o’clock I began to feel faint, and before dark I needed someone to help me up to my chamber, as my natural strength was leaving me very fast, and I lay prostrate for 2 days without any pain– sick with disappointment.”

Miller recorded his personal disappointment in his memoirs: “Were I to live my life over again, with the same evidence that I then had, to be honest with God and man, I should have to do as I have done. I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment.” Miller continued to wait for the second coming of Jesus Christ until his death in 1849. Read full article here…

Last year a pet of mine managed to dig herself right into the centre of a compost heap and it took five hours to recover her. If I’d only known I could have got on the phone to summon some nice burly lads to do the spadework for me…

Fire crews hunt escaped hamster

Eight firefighters have been called in to help find an escaped hamster in East Lothian.

Two crews used a chocolate-covered camera and a vacuum cleaner to try and locate missing Fudgie at six-year-old Zoe Appleby’s home in Dunbar.

Fire crews spent five hours trying to recover the pet after it scuttled down a hole in the kitchen floor.

But, the hamster, who was being looked after for a friend during the holidays, is still refusing to come out.

[snip]

Mrs Appleby said: “I had been on a week’s holiday and had gone back to work, my manager’s fiance is in the fire brigade and the conversation snowballed into the fire brigade coming round to the house.” Read full story here…

Something tells me that you’d be better off not summoning the emergency services in a similar situation - if you have no personal connection to trade on, that is…

Naked man found wedged in chimney

A naked man found wedged in the chimney of a supermarket in Wigan has been arrested on suspicion of burglary.

Police officers discovered him trapped in a chimney breast of a Tesco Express store on Ormskirk Road, Pemberton.

Firefighters were called to rescue the man who had become trapped in the chimney as he tried to get out.

[snip]

A Greater Manchester Police spokeswoman said: “It is believed some of his clothes came off as a result of him struggling to get out of the chimney.” Read full story here…

The moral of this tale? If contemplating breaking and entering - buy a decent belt.