Oh dear. It’s really looking as if 2007 won’t be the year I learn to play honky-tonk piano and read the complete works of Iris Murdoch, after all. This current televisual golden age is driving a tank right through my plans to become a more entertaining and erudite person. I’m still catching up on The West Wing and The Sopranos, I’ve got America’s Next Top Model, Grow Your Own Veg, Dragons’ Den, 24, Primeval, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and The Verdict, Doctor Who is coming back in a few weeks . . . This is the sitting-on-the-sofa-watching-TV equivalent of being rushed off your feet.

And now, finally to finish me off: Heroes. Many of my acquaintances have been “fat-piping” this off the net for weeks — mainly, I thought, for the thrill of being 43 years old and otherwise fairly respectable, but then being able to say “Whoo-wee, I’ve been fat-piping Heroes off the net” and making it sound like hot drugs or something. But, of course, Heroes is drugs. The tape I was sent had the first two episodes on, and even though I had had four hours’ sleep the night before, and didn’t finish watching the first episode until 1am, I didn’t hesitate for a moment before putting on episode two. Frankly, if they’d sent me the whole series, you’d be sitting here looking at a blank page, and my emaciated children would now be in care.

In a nutshell, Heroes asks: “What is the next stage of evolution for humans?” The answer it provides seems to be: “Gigantic, ambitious, multilayered sci-fi serials with immense FX budgets”.

On the same day in October 2006, across the world, a handful of people are starting to realise that they’re not normal. In Texas, a cheerleader is on her sixth attempt to kill herself, but finds her body repairing itself within seconds. In Tokyo, a sci-fi geek salaryman is able to teleport himself to New York. In New York, a junkie sci-fi cartoonist keeps painting disasters that then come true. In Las Vegas, a single-mother stripper finds that her reflection is actually a cold, calculating killer.

All of the “Heroes” are in some way linked with each other. Of course they are — ferocious narrative entwinement is what these shows are all about. That’s their blood and bone. By the end of the first episode, we’ve already discovered that the Japanese salaryman’s life is being depicted in the cartoons drawn by the junkie cartoonist. Further spooky parallels are bound to follow — after all, the son of a murdered Indian scientist is trying to complete his father’s lifework by tracking them all down, and there’s some shadowy business guy who seems to know quite a lot. Plus a serial killer who looks as if he’s got at least one, if not two, sub-plots in him. I mean, he killed his last victim by pinning her to a banister with cutlery, and then froze her husband to death while he ate his tea. And then cut the top of his head off. And stole the brain. He’s not going to fizzle out disappointingly.

But the big news is that this is big news. Heroes is going to ruin your life (and if not now, then certainly when it comes to BBC Two in a couple of months).

You have now been chosen.

You’re going to find yourself interlinked with a shadowy brother-ship of “special” people across the world — geeks with fat tubes. You could be Heroes, just for the next couple of years.

There are similar levels of inter-textual narrative to be found in Michael Cockerell’s Blair: The Inside Story.

It seems extraordinary that Cockerell has this footage — any other documentary-maker would have to do an anaemic reconstruction, using looky-likies, but Cockerell has history in the making on tap, and utilises it all deftly. His unprecedentedaccess continues when the Blairs move in to Downing Street — lurking in Campbell’s office, Cockerell takes Blair by surprise, and gets a wonderfully revealing seven-minute explanation from a flustered, back-footed Blair about why spin-doctors are necessary in modern politics. Another two parts to go. Unwise to miss any, by the looks of things.

Finally, Once Upon a Time in Iran is intimately shot, and follows a group of Shia Muslims making apilgrimage to a site of martyrdom in Iraq. Most of the footage takes place on the five-day bus trip, and it’s certainly not a typical Suntours journey. Getting ready to honour previous martyrs, the whole bus rocks and weeps as the pilgrimage MC intones: “With your crying eyes and burning heart, remember their pain. Remember their chopped heads on top of sticks, and their bodies crushed under horses’ hooves.”

It’s hard to imagine Cliff Richard subsequently striking up into a care-free version of Summer Holiday. But still — a beautiful portrait in how endless war distorts myth and time until they merge, causing a man to cry hysterically over someone who died 700 years ago, while his two-year-old son stares at him, puzzled.

Heroes, Sci-Fi Channel (Sky 129; NTL 135; Telewest 135), Mon, 10pm; Blair: The Inside Story, Tues, BBC Two, 9pm; Once Upon a Time in Iran, Thur, C4, 9pm. TV&Radio starts on page 40

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