But then everything causes Rick anxiety. Last night he was obsessing about the misuse of the phrase “of course” by his dour home help Magda and whether his new pistachio-coloured scooter (he insisted it was “Italian racing green”) was too effeminate. Minor irritations are to Rick what daffodils were to Wordsworth.

When the series started, I obsessed about its debt to Curb Your Enthusiasm and whether it was too self-regarding in having a comedian playing a comedian. But I guess what counts is whether it’s funny, and Lead Balloon has delivered lovely moments as well as scene-stealing turns from Anna Crilly’s Magda, as perpetually gloomy as a Soviet tenement block, and Tony Gardner as a shell- shocked City trader-turned-organic restaurateur. And leading it all is Dee, who turns childish pettiness into something almost endearing.

The series has been such a hit that tonight it transfers to BBC Two before its digital run is even over. Don’t you find all this digital- terrestrial interplay confusing? The Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood (BBC Two) seems to be on every other night. Perhaps there’s a rift in time? Last night the alien-hunting team were spooked by visions of the past or, as Captain Jack Harkness helpfully put it, “an echo of a moment amplified by an alien device”. Of course, you may already have seen this episode on Sunday on BBC Three, or perhaps will catch it tomorrow. I think I’m getting a headache.

Watching television nowadays is like being in a temporal whirlpool that would freak out any Time Lord. I tuned into Spooks on BBC One on Monday (how many times can Adam Carter asks his fellows spies to trust him just one more time?) only to find that I’d already seen it the week before on BBC Four. There used to be a regular rhythm to watching a weekly series. Now it’s all digital “push the red button” entreaties to watch extra content, characters’ blogs at MySpace.com, mobile phone episodes, or buying DVD packages and video games containing new and additional plot information. As Captain Jack also declared: “We’ve got no idea what we’re dealing with.”

My temporal confusion continued with the American series Entourage, which had its terrestrial premiere on ITV1. Curiously this was the second series, the first having been only on digital ITV2. Not that it was hard for non-digital viewers to pick up on the story of pretty-boy movie star Vincent Chase and his freeloading hangers-on genially parading around Hollywood like self-entitled jerks. At least that’s what the first series had been like. Last night, the smugness was waning as Chase came back from making an indie film in New York to find his hot status in LA had cooled down.

Entourage taps into our infatuation with celebrity and the desire to see the entrails of fame-making. But the series is also rooted in the group dynamics of conflict, jealousies and success among close-knit friends. This is a testosterone-driven, frat-boy version of Sex and the City, which means it doesn’t require you to be a Hollywood insider to enjoy it. That takes some doing in a town where a mirror is a devotional entity on a par with God. Of course, you may have already seen last night’s episode on, oh, you know the rest.

Captain Jack might well have described Break with the Boss (Living TV) as the echo of a moment amplified by a lack of originality. This was The Apprentice in over-diluted form with palm trees as three health-club managers employed by Duncan Bannatyne, one of the capitalists on Dragons’ Den, competed for promotion during a weekend in Barbados. The only interesting moment came when Bannatyne challenged the trio to pinpoint one of his bad points and they all cited an unapproachable aura. This was criticism as sucking up.

Yet it made one wonder to what extent this “aura” emanated from Bannatyne as a millionaire boss or as a TV face with its trademark frown and grumpy stare. I’m sure the National Television Awards will introduce a category for Most Grumpy TV Expert. Last night we got Most Popular TV Contender for reality TV participants. So now you can win an award for simply being yourself. I wish Rick Spleen had been hosting — he would have pulled a great face.

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