My first addiction was probably Neighbours. It was so light, so easy to watch, you barely noticed it was there at all, and certainly not that you were becoming hooked - and all of a sudden it was full-blown, I couldn't manage a day without it, had withdrawal symptoms if we went on holiday, couldn't cope without my daily saccharine soap hit.
Eventually, due to an enforced regime of cold turkey (otherwise known as "getting a job"), I was weaned off the Aussie soaps and on to the heavyweight dramas. Twin Peaks, Cold Feet, This Life, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, West Wing, CSI, Desperate Housewives. Recently, though, it's all dropped off a little - well, for perhaps three weeks since the end of CSI, and I've been a little twitchy without a next fix to look forward to.
And with the advent of Lost, I think I may have found my next addiction - or that's what all the previews are saying, anyway. So if you want to keep your Wednesday nights your own, avoid it like the plague - or check out one of our other picks of the day, taken from this week's Guide and today's Guardian.
Lost 8.30pm & 10pm, C4 On a wreckage-strewn beach, aviation fuel leaks and a jet engine spins. Amidst the carnage, traumatised survivors, from heroic doctor Jack to faded rock star Charlie, try to take in what's just happened. Except how do you deal with the horror of a plane crash? Or of being stranded on an island where a mysterious creature roars its disapproval in the jungle? Take elements of horror, sci-fi and the psychological thriller, add near-cinematic production values, great characters and a twisting script, and that's Lost, a show that gets everything right. Watch and be hooked.
Jonathan Wright
The Slavery Business: Sugar Dynasty 9pm, BBC2 Tonight's episode focuses on Britain's wholly laudable — if wholly overdue — abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. Reasonably enough, the focus is on the abolitionist crusader William Wilberforce, though the narrator notes that the great reformer's idealism was tempered by pragmatism — he was in favour of ending the trade gradually, rather than wholesale emancipation. This is slightly simplistic but informative television.
Andrew Mueller
Quitters 10pm, BBC4 Taking its title from the T-shirt slogan "Rehab is for quitters", Morgan Matthews' commendably unpretentious film looks inside Phoenix House, a South London rehab clinic for hardcore drug addicts, many of them criminals sent by courts as an alternative to prison. The hero of the film is Jimmy, one of the counsellors, whose first experience of the programme he now runs was as one of its beneficiaries —he was the subject of a 1996 film about heroin addiction. While the substance of the film is depressing — the inmates are encouraged to discuss their situations at length on camera — the drama is compelling.
Andrew Mueller
The Wire 10pm, FX In the first series, Prez was one of the minor characters who was really allowed to grow — from a useless wildcard on the streets to a patient desk-jockey, with a real eye for detail. So it's a great touch that he might be the one responsible for getting the team back together. At a family dinner, he catches the ear of Valchek, his moody, but very senior cop father-in-law, who suddenly realises what a bungle it was letting Burrell close down the wire for the sake of a few low-level busts. Especially now he's got Prez involved in his stained-glass window beef with the dock boys. Elsewhere in Baltimore tonight, we find out what Omar is up to, and Jimmy gets some family news.
Richard Vine
How to Start Your Own Country 10pm, BBC2 The likable King Danny I has finally found a country to rule - his flat in east London. Now all he needs is citizens so that his new nation can be at least as big as the world's smallest country, Vatican City. He's realised that countries need some sense of nationhood - a flag, a coat of arms - and a name would certainly come in handy. He also promises a knighthood to two friends with guitars if they can come up with an annoyingly catchy national anthem.
Mary Novakovich
Oh, that's useful, there's a programme that everyone's declaring enthusiastically to be 'addictive' and likely to get you 'hooked', and a programme about rehab on on the same evening. Poignant? Perhaps not. Sensitive? Almost certainly not. Funny?
I wouldn't like to say.
