It’s a great week here on British television. I can live without television quite well most of the time but looking at the shows that I have been waiting to view on Sky+ this week, well I can’t wait. In one week, I can sit down and indulge in the new series of the moodily retro Mad Men about a painfully slick 1960s advertising agency that gets everything right except the lack of smoke from the cigarettes.

Then there is the new season of one of my all time favourites, the Miami-based series about a psychopath with a conscience. I really care about Dexter and his sister too and, in that sad TV addict way, really want things to turn out well for them. Some hope, I know.

I am also enjoying, as I have all the previous ones,  Season Nine of the Washington D.C. series NCIS with its mix of humour and the macabre. I care about these guys too and want Gibbs to find happiness in more than his woodwork and, I really would like Tony and Shiva to get it together, no I wouldn’t, yes I would, well that’s why I like it. It is remarkable too, for a mere Brit. to see a TV programme that manages to get due patriotism right without coming across as Fascist propaganda.

This isn’t just an American thing because I’m also half way through the beautifully made Sicilian series Inspector Montalbano with, yet again, a sophisticated blend of humour and malice along with loads of shots of where I spent my Summer holidays last year. I try to listen to the Italian and tell myself it is educational but I do read the subtitles too and, in the dangerous way of great TV, every week I definitely decide that I want to live in Sicily.

I could be watching the new series of True Blood too – I loved the first season but liked each succeeding one a bit less each time and now, well, I think I’m going to give it a miss. it has got just that much too silly even for me. I might change my mind though when they repeat it on Channel Four.

So British television is great at the moment and I’m not even missing the last season of that greatest of great Danish TV dramas The Killing that came and went much too quickly. Well, it never quite leaves me, I care about Lund, you see, just like I worry about Dexter, Gibbs, Tony, Shiva, Salvo Montalbano, Don from Mad Men and, let’s not forget Peggy.

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I was reading a magazine interview with the chief executive of Britain’s main commercial channel this morning. Mr Adam Crozier, late of the Post Office and the Football Association, was talking about his ITV multichannel stations: “It’s about clearer positioning, branding and improving the programming…”

Sorry Mr Crozier, I am yawning already.

A new executive had just been appointed a director of ITV’s digital channels and, as is often the case these days, the only real drama in the British TV industry is in the power politics within television’s management teams.

The BBC’s Director General is always in the news too, struggling with budget cuts, killing off stations just to reinstate them, and, here too, the real drama has been up there at management level. Our television screens seems to glaze over whenever British television drama teeters into view.

I wondered if I was being unfair, after-all this is high season for television scheduling, so I had a look at the top 100 network programmes transmitted in Britain this month only to find that I had only stayed with one of them for more than five minutes and that wasn’t a drama – it was the documentary series Human Planet which has gradually worn me down with its irritatingly hammy narration by the otherwise marvellous actor John Hurt. The last time I watched it, I zimmed through on fast forward only stopping at the interesting bits. A shame as there was some sensational programming making there and all they needed to do was not assume that all British television viewers are even more brain damaged than I am. The dramas, however, have been dire, unoriginal or just worthy and dull.

So, for television drama, forget Silk (boring), Downton Abbey (an old sack of old story lines), Zen (tired tosh), Luther (dull) South Riding (gawd, haven’t we all been there so many times before!) – you see what I mean.

Sorry but I am going to stick with these shows:

The latest series (eight) of NCIS (FX Channel) which continues to mix drama and comedy with touches of engaging autopsy:

The new series (four) of True Blood (FX channel) which goes from strength to strength and is now, thankfully, way beyond the realms of decency and sanity:

The brilliant new series by the makers of The Wire, Treme (Sky Atlantic) which shows just how contemporary events and issues can be brought to the screen without even a hint of mandarin condescension:

I am enjoying nothing more though than the Danish thriller series The Killing (BBC Four) which is not just gripping but original, scary, perceptive as well as being fabulously shot, edited and acted:

and, I can’t wait until Dexter Season Five is back on our British screens (spoiler warning if you haven’t seen series 1, 2, 3 and 4) – how come American and Danish tv drama can combine entertainment, cinematographic brilliance with intelligence and wit but Britain just can’t get it? Come on guys, wake up!

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