A young woman is introduced as a happily married mother of two – and she is dying of cancer. How does that make you feel? My wife and I have two young boys. They make us the prime target for Seven’s new documentary series, True Stories . We only had to see the first promotional commercial and our hearts went out. What would the rest of the program hold?

What do the fictional characters Dr Who and James Bond have in common? British ancestry? A penchant for witty one-liners? How about a drastic reworking for the sake of political correctness?

The transformation is complete – rendering is the new red-brick, brown is the new lime, and Seven is the new TEN. The network’s dogged pursuit of the nation’s 20-somethings has finally produced an Australian production that makes Big Brother look like a relationship counseling service. Welcome to Last Man Standing (LMS) and the lowest common denominator.

Seldom have I seen a program get so many television reviewers hot under the collar. Super Nanny, Nine’s parenting reality show, has them steaming from coast to coast. Is it the clichéd English inclusions? The strict instructions? The liberal use of the infamous ‘naughty step’? I think not. It’s something far more basic than that. Morality has entered the picture and someone has dared to tell parents that children – sweet, innocent children – can be bad.

Domestic issues are often the sub-plot for television thrillers – in Mediumthey’re the main event. Sure, suburban mum Alison Dubois has suddenly been given a vision of an imminent murder and the district attorney is out of town – but she still has two kids to get to school.

Are we seeing the end of ‘reality television’? Is the tide finally turning against cheap ‘real life’ productions (like, err … Survivor) and finally running back to big budget dramas? The kind that employ real actors instead of real people? Channel Seven certainly hopes so.

Over the last year media commentators have been busy burying the Seven Network as the latest and greatest victim of the commercial ratings war. TEN was consolidating its hold on the under 35’s; Nine had all but captured the nation’s baby-boomers. But Desperate Housewives suggests 2005 will be the year of Seven’s second coming.

There is an art to spectating cricket. Channel 9 has been developing this art on TV for many seasons. The best new segment this year has to be the ‘Crackin’ Cricket Heroes’ competition. I love the amateur video footage of great moments in backyard cricket, under 10s finals on concrete pitches and Uncle Ken taking a blinder in the slips.

The average Australian toddler spends a third of his or her waking life in front of the television. A four month old watches an average of 44 minutes a day, building to two and a half hours by the time they reach four years. Some would call such statistics appalling; others, evidence of a necessary evil.

Shake the TV guide these days and six or seven crime dramas are bound to fall out. Cold Case is one well worth picking up. The series is the Nine Network’s answer to the dominance TEN has been showing in the genre since the advent of the Law & Order stable of programs. Shoulder to shoulder with Jerry Bruckheimer’s CSI on Tuesday nights, Cold Case now packs a formidable punch in the battle for evening ratings.

Talking about John Safran is a good way of dividing people into generations. Most people over 40 are more likely to confuse him with some household make-over host, and be disturbed when the error is rectified. But for a younger generation Safran is fast becoming something of a ‘tell it like it is’ televisual guru. His no-holds-barred examination of the music industry – Music Jamboree – earned him two AFI awards. His follow-up production, John Safran vs. God, promises to be no less forgiving.

A friend of mine used to say, “Only a good script promises a good result.” I can only wonder what he would have made of gems like, “Looks like blunt force brain surgery!”, and “I’m going ahead with this – minimum mercy; maximum sentence” – two of my favourite quotes from television’s longest running criminal drama, Law & Order. Snappy scripts filled with lines like these have been the bedrock beneath fifteen seasons of Emmy Award winning episodes. Incidentally, they also serve as an excellent summary of the philosophies behind the show’s prolonged success.

There is a war going on in Australia that has nothing to do with terrorists or the Middle East – but the consequences are felt in millions of households every afternoon at 5:00pm. In their drive to deliver bigger audiences to their news hours, two commercial networks have been committing significant resources to separate attempts to create Australia’s most compelling game show.

The first real thing we learn about Joe Pitt is that he is a homosexual – and he doesn’t want to be. Joe tries to explain this heart-rending contradiction to his staggered wife, “I though that with enough will or effort I could change this, but I can’t. My whole life has conspired to bring me to this point and I can’t deny my whole life.” This is the philosophy at the heart of the Broadway show come HBO television series, Angels In America: if a person is attracted to the opposite sex, it is because God made him or her that way.