So the early rush of tv shows for 2009 has finished. It's been a mad rush of taping and IQing a gazillion shows and then trying to find bits of time watch them. Sheesh, the pressure I am under, I can't tell you!

Anyway, Dexter is finished and I have to say Season 3 a little disappointing. Of course I would watch any program featuring Michael C Hall, even if it was an hour of him sitting on a stool whistling Dixie, but this season just didn't cut it for me. On the other hand I know that such a unique idea can not be sustained for three seasons without loosing some integrity. I can now live in fear/anticipation of Season 4 which is apparently on it's way.

City Homicide also concluded for the season with a very unexpected and terrible ending. Got to give it to the writers for having the balls to end it like that. That show continues to hold our attention.

Underbelly is a dog's breakfast but it's fun and stupid and a little worrying. I don't mind the bums and tits, nothing I don't see in the bathroom every day of my life (sure their's are a little firmer and perkier). I do hate it when they break for Easter though; I mean, does anyone NOT have a VCR and/or some other much more technologically advanced recording device these days?

Packed to the Rafters has been enjoyable (especially with the guest appearance of our dear friend Dina) but I am a tad disappointed with the super cliche, a late in life pregnancy. Gosh, who could have seen that one coming? Overall still a good Tuesday night show which provides a reasonable dose of entertainment without wasting too many brain cells.

Now that regular shows are taking a break I can catch up on True Blood, the entire series of which I have IQ'd but not watched. I do love a vampire tale but I'm not sure what to expect with this strange little series. Also Big Jay and I can finish watching that damn addictive Come Dine With Me which we've been stockpiling on the IQ, mainly because those 20 minute episodes are just right when we want to fill in a bit of time or when we're just too bloody tired to contemplate an entire 90-120 minute movie (which, let's face it, is most of the time).

There's also a new series (praise the ????) of Jon and Kate plus Eight starting at the end of the month. How I've missed those crazy cats and their eight gorgeous offspring. Will I give the new season of Australia's Next Top Model a go? Perhaps now that Sarah O'Hare/Murdoch is hosting I'll give it another try. It's no Big Brother but it does give me a certain dose of shock/horror/yell at the teev type reality entertainment I've been missing.

You know I love reality TV as much (probably more so, much more so) than the next person.

But this is GOING WAY. TOO. FAR!

Britain's Missing Top Model

Even I wouldn't watch something this dreadful. Well, maybe just the first episode... but only so I can then take the high moral ground and whinge about it later.

Oh, who am I kidding?

YES, there is a God (well, not really... it's just an expression, right...). Anyway, my excitement comes with the news that Channel 9 will be screening, amongst it's huuuuuuge line up of reality tv shows for 2008, Weddings - 10 Years On.

The original Weddings was on in the late 1990s and was a particular favourite of mine, especially since I was getting married in 1998 and spent a lot of time thinking of such things. More honestly I loved this show because it gave me a great opportunity to ridicule the poor white trash who made up the majority of its "cast".

Oh please please please let them re-visit the couple whose wedding included a present from the bride to the groom of a Persian kitten, who she attempted to walk down the aisle on a lead. It just doesn't get better than that. I'll remember these people until the day I die.

(No wonder I don't know the capital city of most countries and in, fact, couldn't locate many of them on a map. This is the sort of crap my head is filled with.)

I love Come Dine With Me, a BBC production shown here on Lifestyle Food.

It's a cooking program which runs over five nights and features five amateur home "chefs" who each host a dinner party at their home. The four guests give a score each evening and at the end of the week the winner gets one thousand pounds.

Unarguably it's less about food and more about the people who participate. Though I have picked up a decent recipe or two (the chicken thigh cutlets stuffed with mushrooms and wrapped in pancetta are super easy and totally yummy) most of these people are not Gordon Ramsay by any stretch of the imagination.

It may not be high brow entertainment but where else are you going to meet a bloke who not only owns a vol-au-vent cooking machine (like a home donut making machine but so much weirder) but also did an embalming course and embalmed his own father! But wait there is more. He has a picture of his dead mother, in her coffin, in the guest bedroom. Hands up who wants to stay the night!

Just when you think you're scraping the absolute bottom of the bucket reality tv-wise (e.g. Strange Love) you realise that this bucket is truly bottomless. Halleluiah, praise the Lord ... for Kept, the riveting series highlighting the trials and tribulations of a bunch of wannabe, currently unemployed actors (how else would you explain it) all vying to become Jerry Hall's kept man.

I really can't see how things can get any worse (better?) on the reality tv front. A series about a man looking to marry the duck of his dreams? Teams of celebrities competing to build the best mansion out of human excrement? Politicians, electrodes attached to their genitals, attempting to prove that they wouldn't sell their grandmother for a vote? The mind boggles.

Thank you TV1. You alone are worth the price of cable tv.