My editor called me last week. “Nick,” she said, “We’ve been getting some feedback that you’re, well, too negative. Try writing about something good so our readers have an idea what to watch as opposed to what they should avoid for fear of permanent mental scars, y’know?” I tried convincing her that I have been upbeat, sometimes, about 30 per cent of the time on average, and recommended a fair few shows on telly, but the fact is that the majority of stuff broadcast is absolute mindless drivel, so what’s a man to do? But she wasn’t convinced.

As a result, this week I’ve been watching my television quota (and trust me, I do have a very strict quota) specifically with an open mind. A mind so open it could be likened to the Gobi desert, unaffected by the rampant cynicism and scorn which permeates my daily life. In particular I watched a bunch of ‘reality’ shows, mainly because they’re on all the time, and there’s lots of Finnish versions of them. I watched X-Factor (MTV3) again, for example, and have now come to realise that this is clearly the pinnacle of televisual entertainment, and it’s not an entertainment show, it’s a comedy, you see.

Last week the remaining tone-deaf contestants were divided into three groups, each to be judged by one of the experts and a seemingly random unheard of sidekick. All semblance of competition was thrown to the wind when the group performances were judged by the blond woman, and right after kicking out one of the groups announced that everyone else would go through to the next round. This must have made the one troupe who got the heave-ho feel really shit, but the hilarious thing was that out of all the contestants none of them could sing. NONE OF THEM, d’you hear? They were all so amazingly bad that they would never have got past the first round in any self-respecting talent show in the world. Luckily for them, and us, the Finnish X-Factor is as far from self-respecting as it’s possible to get, and is clearly desperate, but I can at least affirm that watching it is guaranteed to make you feel better about yourself. So yeah, that’s a great show, I recommend it.

Not to be outdone, Nelonen have ploughed ahead and put a new season of Kuorosota (‘Choir Wars’) on air – a singing show where they have cleverly removed the problem of having a few people who can’t sing by getting several massive groups of people who can’t really sing individually belt out some show-stopping numbers loud enough that it doesn’t matter. Apart from the fact that the song selection is incredibly poor, this is really fantastic entertainment. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Back on MTV3 you can also catch the tail-end of Maajussille morsian, which can roughly be translated as ‘A wife for farmer Jussi’, where a group of farmers vie for the attention of a woman, hoping she’ll fall for them and come to live on a farm and milk cows and stuff. Brilliant. I mean, this is the quality shizness right here.

Finally, and seriously, it appears that if we are to have anything worth watching this spring, we must put our faith in YLE and their deal with HBO. True Blood, basically a teen vampire drama, is pretty cheesy, but believing in the supernatural is easier than the uphill struggle that is finding anything decent on on our commercial channels.

NICK BARLOW