Humble apologies dear reader for my absence last week. I can only imagine your disappointment as you sat down with your cafe au lait and softly boiled egg last weekend and opened your Macbook, logging on only to find no TV Preview. Oh gracious reader, I did not abandon you for naught! In fact it was during writing last weeks preview that tragedy struck in my humble home. As I sat on my sofa composing my weekly tome, calm was interrupted as I was suddenly swimming against, nay drowning in the tsunami that is winter vomiting bug which struck into the very soul of every man, woman and child. Abandoning my laptop, my opening paragraph saved to drafts, I entered a battle that I am only now recovering from.

If TV preview had been with you last week, it would have opened something along the lines of this:

“I know at least one person who will be silly with excitement about the new BBC2 comedy Inside No 9, starting Wednesday at 10pm. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton follow up Psychoville, which ended in 2011, with this macabre series centered on the grisly goings on inside houses with a 9 on their front door. From a grand country house where a game of ‘sardines’ is afoot, to an actors haunted dressing room, the tales are high comedy and sheer horror in equal measure.” Good news, dear reader, it is still not too late to tune in to this program and this weeks episode sounds like a triumphant tour de force!

BBC 4 are filling their cop-drama-with-subtitles slot with the Belgian series Salamander starting tonight at 9pm. The heist of a security deposit box containing “sensitive” contents in a private bank brings Paul Gerardi into investigate. The villan of the piece is Joachim Klaus who has a safe full of the grubby secrets that the Belgian elite would rather not see the light of day.

Fleming starts on Wednesday night on Sky Atlantic at 9pm. This miniseries is a drama-documentary about the real life adventures of Bond creator Ian Fleming and the similarities between the two are played out with copious scenes of Fleming skiing, seducing beautiful women and partaking in international travel. Fleming is played by Dominic Cooper and is set before the second world war when he is co-opted into naval intelligence.

I spent much of my convalescence watching the box and if I can leave you, precious reader, with one piece of advice it is this: No matter how delusional with illness you are don’t watch Austenland. Brett McKenzie can’t save it.

LAW