Watching Lost and Heroes has compelled me to confront great philosophical issues

It’s best to be upfront about this. Pretty soon, I’m going to use words like ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’. I’m going to use the word ‘peer’ and I’m not going to mean people like Lord Levy. I mention this, just so you know. Just so you don’t get halfway through and think, ‘the sneaky bastard. This is geek stuff. I thought it was going to be something interesting.’

It is something interesting, I think. And it isn’t really geek stuff. It’s about Lost and Heroes and The Wire, and all those sexy American dramas that have suddenly made owning a television worthwhile again. Have you seen The Wire? It’s a gritty cops ’n’ drug dealers thing, and Nick Hornby once wrote that it was the best thing on television. He was almost wrong, but only in the sense that it only barely is on television. If you want to catch it in the UK, you have to be pretty nifty with your recorder, or buy the DVD box set.