Today's TV is in desperate need of some quality control

Silly question really, as like just about everyone else on the planet I simply can’t live without one. Not that yours truly spends every waking moment glued to the goggle box – or to be precise in this digital age – a super slim flat screen.

About three to four hours is my daily dose, though as a modern television can also double up as a radio, and as a dedicated listener hooked to Radio Four, come the weekend the screen remains blank as my imagination makes the picture.

Not for yours truly a set of cinematic proportions but a nice compact 26-inch model, which is in my opinion, quite sufficient for a room measuring 16 feet square.

There is nothing more overpowering than entering the average lounge to be ‘thrown’ against the opposite wall by a screen so large that it dominates everything.

It is sod’s law that the more channels that come available the less there is worth watching. Not that mediocrity stops people from sitting there, for hours on end, flicking from one to another for snippets of programmes so banal they give light entertainment a bad name.

Channel Four, which started out so positively as independent television’s worthy competitor to BBC Two, now exists on a diatribe of reality-based programmes dominated by Come Dine With Me, broadcast back to back, over many hours, day after day, month by month, throughout the year.

The realisation what the nation is now populated by such a motley collection of attention-seeking self-publicists – and after so many years they total tens of thousands – must have sent emigration levels soaring. Then when those escapees reach pastures new they discover to their horror that there is a local version of the programme as equally irritating as the original version.

Even the French, who pride themselves on a superior culinary heritage, and who never fail to look down their Gallic noses at British cuisine, have succumbed to the trend.

In the not so distant days gone by, exciting new cutting edge drama by edgy writers, lavish costume dramas, cleverly composed detective series and side-splittingly funny situation comedies were common fare.

But, like everything, such diverse schedules came at a price and getting four people to cook for each other is far cheaper than adapting a Jane Austen novel for the small screen.

So now we can spend our evenings – and all day long if you have the time to waste – watching programmes featuring people doing a variety of jobs from midwifery to helicopter rescues; ice road trucking to deep sea fishing and instructing new drivers to inner city policing.

In addition to ‘real’ life there is the motley collection of ‘reality’ programmes featuring Big Brother contestants, competing guesthouse owners (my one indulgence in the genre), people with strange and worrying medical conditions, gypsy weddings, fashion makeovers et al. At times the list seems endless.

On top of all that is 21st centuries television’s fascination with food and cooking which has spawned an overwhelming plethora of programmes featuring culinary celebrities, Michelin starred chefs and talented home cooks battling their way through round after round of baking and cooking challenges.

If Come Dine With Me dominates Channel Four’s schedules then the Hairy Bikers are in danger of doing the same on the BBC. As much as I can enjoy their passion for and novel approach to get the great British public cooking, the likeable duo is in danger of reaching its sell-by date with four new series in the past year not forgetting all the repeats of previous ones!

As the reality/cooking genre has proliferated as rapidly as the red weed in H G Wells The War of the Worlds engulfed the land in the wake of the Martian invasion, it will invariably whither and die.

The latest offering, The Great British Sewing Bee, sandwiched unsurprisingly last Tuesday between the Hairy Bikers and a documentary on everyday life in the hard-pressed NHS, showed that the programmers are beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel. No doubt they hope that the competition to find the nation’s best amateur sewer will do for needlework what The Great British Bake Off, has done for cake making.

For someone who last school report praised the effort of making a splendid stuffed toy, while observing that the item was not much to show for an entire school year’s work, I can’t say that a bevy of talented sewers will grip my attention as much Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood comparing soggy bottoms. But who am I to comment among a nation hungry hooked on such programmes and ever hungry for new subjects in an ever-decreasing market?

Having baked their way across Europe, then dieted in the name of television ratings before serving up haute cuisine on a budget, what will the Hairy Bikers have to do next? And which nation’s ailing restaurants will be subjected to the expletive laden criticism of Gordon Ramsay? The mind boggles.

As sure as the world turns full circle every 24 hours, the current fascination for cooking/reality/competition programming will wane as those for garden and home makeovers did.

We can only live in hope that it will bring a return of the quality television once envied the world over. Until then my shiny new set will spend its days and nights doubling up as a radio.