Things you won’t be doing this month – watching new episodes of Desperate Housewives or 24. As the Hollywood writers’ strike enters its third month, its effects are being felt on British televisions. And if you like to watch the frocks on the UK rerun of the Golden Globes ceremony, no luck there, either.

The hardest-hit audiences are the Kiefer Sutherland and 24 addicts. Fox insists on broadcasting the show nonstop in its entirety, one episode a week. With production halted, the show is suspended indefinitely. Channel 4 has moved Desperate Housewives, My Name Is Earl and Reaper back to March, Sky has only a few episodes of Prison Break in the can and Five staples such as CSI and House are 12 episodes short. Luckily for fans of US drama, The Sopranos and the BBC’s new Glenn Close series, Damages, had finished filming, so will stick to planned slots; Sky will start Lost again this month, and has a reasonably healthy number of episodes in store; and Grey’s Anatomy, on Five, is fine, as the UK is a series behind the USA.

In LA, predictions are that the strike might hold until March. Some series are clinging on. The Law and Order franchise, created by the former Hill Street Blues writer and Miami Vice producer Dick Wolf, is still shooting, with Wolf having stockpiled scripts and – rumour has it – handling rewrites himself. The late-night talk shows are also back, sans writers, leading to Jay Leno, a guild member, being in trouble for scripting his own material.

As most series slip from our screens, however, a more serious dearth can be glimpsed over their wounded bodies. The complex ecosystem of American television means that studios should be preparing pilot scripts for autumn 2008 about now. Pilot season – the eight-week period when networks decide which shows to commission – begins in mid-March. By then, most pilots should have been cast, with filming either started or ready to go. By early May, everyone should have a pretty good idea which new series will air when the important autumn season starts. As no scripts are being written, the networks have been calling in the producers of reality-television shows. “Ideas that had been rejected by every single studio are suddenly hot property,” says Edward Waller, editor of the trade bible C21.

Given that we are in the middle of a recognised golden age in American television, it seems a shame that American Idol and Carson Kressley’s version of How to Look Good Naked will now move centre stage. The glimmer of hope for fans of quality comes from cable. CBS is already considering “repurposed” (ie, sanitised) versions of risqué shows such as the serial-killer drama Dexter and the pot-smoking suburban series Weeds from its subsidiary channel Showtime. NBC is doing the same with Monk and Psych.

This is both good and bad for the Brits. Good for those who make reality television – an astonishing 50% of all reality formats are created here – and good, too, for Billie Piper, as Secret Diary of a Call Girl has been picked up by Showtime and looks set to make the repurposed jump to CBS. Everyone involved in making the series is insisting this has nothing to do with the writers’ strike – but as this would make Secret Diary the first-ever British show on primetime American network television, you do the math(s).

It’s bad, however, for the British film industry. So far, most movies in production will complete: Indiana Jones is still on his way this year. In anticipation of the walkout, some scripts were rushed through, which means that Transformers 2 will hit the screens in summer 2009. In autumn 2009, however, the big screen will start to feel the pinch, as scripts dry up. The directors’ and actors’ unions will begin the same set of negotiations over extra payments for work on DVD and the internet in June, so if the writers’ strike is still on then, Hollywood will basically be shut.

This has huge ramifications for the British film industry. According to the UK Film Council, foreign money – most of it coming from Hollywood studios – made up £570m of UK production in 2006, and had reached £330m by summer 2007. By comparison, UK funding was £148min 2006 and £80m by late summer 2007.

Our dependence on American money was shown in November, when Pinewood Shepperton saw 10% wiped off its share value after news that filming of the Da Vinci Code prequel Angels and Demons had been cancelled. If American movies dry up, swathes of the production sector – and even studios – could shut down.

The strike could even hit the Oscars next month. Actors seem unwilling to cross the picket line, hence the decision to turn the Globes into a press conference. Even if the actors were to break ranks, which seems highly unlikely, no writers would be turning up to the ceremony, which means it would not be allowed to broadcast movie footage.

One can only hope that the prospect of all that extra time given to hysterical winners to sob and thank would so horrify both sides that they’d wrap this thing up pronto.

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