Repetitive Televisual Syndrome

Last night on the television, a programme called (something like) DCI Banks came on.

"Ooh", I thought, "I saw that once, and I rather liked it. How exciting."

(Well, "exciting" might be pushing it, but "how mildly pleasing" is not even "mildly interesting", so I'll stick with the exaggeration).

Anyway, the programme began, and I realised that the thing that has happened to me with countless television series was happening - that is, the episode they were screening was the same one I'd seen before on more than one occasion (not that I've sat right through it more than once, I hasten to add - I do have some standards, if not very many.)

What I would like to know though is this: is it just me or  does this happen to anyone else - I mean not just with that particular episode of DCI Banks, but with all sorts of different television series; and not just police things but comedies and documentaries and other stuff as well? It does not matter where I am in the world, (as long as they have television), I will turn on a television set and the only episode of Silent Witness or I Love  Lucy or Attenborough's Africa (or the DCI Banks thing, whatever it is really called) that I am ever going to be allowed to see will swim up out of the screen's darkness, and I will think, " Not that one again," and turn the thing straight off (except the I Love Lucy one, of course).

Sometimes though I wonder if I shouldn't turn off but should instead watch each of these programmes very, very carefully. Perhaps collectively they contain an important message from the universe that I am meant to pay close attention to.

But of course that is a completely deranged way of thinking. The universe does not send signals to individuals, and certainly not through the medium of mediocre TV programmes.

Or does it?