Right, that's it - any excuse for going out has, like the last vestiges of reasonable weather, vanished into the frosty air. Much as we may wish for just one more warm snap, the warming sun, will not be seen again till spring, and no self-respecting lover of warm noses shouldn't either.
The only compelling course of action is surely to curl up on the sofa with an enormous steaming cup of something and lose yourself in - oh, whatever's on. What is on, actually? Out of the country two weeks and I've lost track entirely - although I could fill you in pretty comprehensively on the world of Sinhilese soap opera. Has the X Factor finished yet? No? And what's that? There's a new series of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here? No! Why did I ever come back?!
Still, there's got to be something else on, and for a selection of what might actually be worth expending eye-juice on, we'll turn to this week's Guide, for their picks of tonight's TV...
Dragons' Den 8pm, BBC2 As with all judging shows, the Dragons know full well they're the real talent here, and boy, are they starting to play up to the camera. It's all about the puns: the bloke with the water-saving device for cisterns is dismissed with "he's flushed 10 years of his life down the toilet"; while a training-lead for dogs is "a dog of a business". They missed a trick in not putting this out on Saturday primetime.
Ali Catterall
Making Slough Happy 9pm, BBC2 Economist Richard Reeves and five colleagues have already spent two weeks on the streets of the Berkshire commuter town, trying to overturn the "centuries of social conditioning" which have contributed to our buttoned-up nationwide glumness, and now he's declared "making Slough smile" day, starting with aisle 22 of the local hypermarket. Meanwhile, a slightly less optimistic Professor Richard Stevens is conducting a hand-holding exercise. Good luck.
Joss Hutton
The Ghost Squad 10pm, C4 The cops-investigating-cops series continues with the downbeat yet well-told tale of an undercover team investigating sex traffickers. New Ghost Squad recruit Amy initially reckons it's all a bit of a laugh, getting a buzz from using her badge as an excuse for joy riding and drugs guzzling. (The script dwells much on the analogies between junkiedom and the adrenaline high of police work.) Gradually, though, the operation starts to unravel. A drama shot through with a convincing atmosphere of moral ambiguity, the latter conveyed largely by a superb performance from Donna Alexander as undercover officer Kate.
Jonathan Wright
A Waste Of Shame 9pm, BBC4 As part of the BBC's Shakespeare season, William Boyd wrote the screenplay for this imagining of a love triangle during Shakespeare's middle years that inspired his sonnets about "WH" and "The Dark Lady". Boyd makes some educated guesses on their identity, concluding that WH was William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and that The Dark Lady was a black prostitute. It's all based on an interpretation of the material within the sonnets, with Boyd reading Shakespeare's affection for WH as a Death In Venice-style infatuation, but most compelling is his portrait of Shakespeare as a jobbing writer, keen simply to earn enough money to retire comfortably in Stratford.
Will Hodgkinson
Weeds 10pm, Sky One Events in Agrestic have deteriorated into chaos somewhat. Andy and Doug trash Nancy's house during an extreme attack of the munchies; but they're not the only rats about: an actual rodent decides to take up residence in the family home, having acquired a taste for weed itself, and a rival dealer comes sniffing around Nancy. The fallout from Celia's one-night stand with Conrad produces an interesting parallel crisis household in another part of suburbia. The only ray of hope in this week's bleak episode arrives in the shape of Peter, a man willing to tolerate Nancy's caustic grief and her brattish kids.
Clare Birchall
Marrying A Stranger: Shabba 9pm, More4 In the first of a new series about British Muslims entering into arranged marriages, 26-year-old Londoner Shabba journeys to a village in Pakistan to meet his bride. "It's like a blind date," he thinks. "I should phone up Cilla Black!" But when he arrives, he's saddened to discover he won't clap eyes on her before the wedding. "Why should you?" chide her relatives. "Silly boy!" From this point on, it becomes a virtual suspense thriller. Will they click? Will she ming? Bittersweet viewing.
Ali Catterall
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So there are quality programmes after all. Well that makes me feel better on a theoretical level, although an unshakeable dose of jetlag means that I'll be asleep before any of them start. Still, any recommendations for what's currently big in the world of 5am viewing will, therefore, be warmly appreciated.
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