Like most people currently raving about it online, it took me by surprise.

The Beeb have given Curtis free reign to make the most wide-ranging and wilfully weird documentary about modern ideologies and their origins you’re ever likely to see.

It’s as aesthetically striking as it is thought-provoking, clashing grainy footage of the first computer technicians against doe-eyed mammals one minute, before veering off into some other loosely-related realm the next.

The soundtrack is also inspired, including Clint Mansell’s foreboding theme from Moon…

The last episode tells the story of Bill Hamilton, the brilliant scientist who travelled to the Congo amidst a brutal civil war to collect chimpanzee faeces in the misguided belief that he could prove that US workers had accidentally created the HIV virus during vaccine testing decades earlier. He died after contracting malaria and refusing to take medication for it.

In the same programme he weaves together ideas about free will, the “selfish gene” theory, racial stereotyping and how liberal values led to bloodshed in the Rwanda crisis.

It’s brilliantly tangential, endlessly fascinating, and if you haven’t seen it, set aside three hours and make sure you do so before Monday.

And if it’s a little pretentious, so what? At least it’s television that actually forces you to think about some of the big questions of our time, rather than whether a rustic-style kitchen is preferable to a sleek, modern alternative for a particular London terraced house.

Tom English has written a column for The Scotsman that pretty much sums up the sorry standard – and has become something of a viral web hit, judging by the traffic its getting – but here are a few dishonourable mentions for my part:

Edgar Davids: Eh?dgar Drivel. The words are there, but add them together and it’s just. not. English.

Alan Shearer: Mr Potato Head. Someone should record his ‘expert analysis’ as a sleeping aid.

Andy Townsend: Andy-Christ. Deeply, deeply disagreeable “Irish” Cockney. The day he completes a sentence without a cliché or the words “I tell you what” is the day hell freezes over.

Clive Tyldesley: Snide Bilgely. It’s written in his contract that everything he says must be translated for the Ingerlanders, even if it’s comparing the male pattern baldness of the Slovakia striker with “Rooooooooney”.

Clarence Seedorf: Call Clarence. And dictate the teamsheet to him. At least his ignorance also extends to England, when he called Gareth Barry ‘whatsisname’.

Robbie Earle: The Earl of Compchester. Alas, we were denied Earle’s blatherings when 36 of his complimentary tickets ended up in the hands of a gaggle of blonde PR girls from a beer company. Gaffes don’t really get any more gaffey than that.

Adrian Chiles: Voodoo Chile (Porky Return). ITV producers, please tell Chiles he’s not a comedian.

There were also BBC/ITV gravy train tickets for the likes of Harry “Brown Envelope” Redknapp, Chris “32 caps for Wales” Coleman, Lee “Traders Need Access To” Dixon and Emmanuel Adebayor, who almost answered a phone call live in the studio.

Very few have impressed. Only Jurgen Klinnsman, Roy Hodgson and Jim Beglin haven’t embarrassed themselves.

For anything approaching insightful commentary (and when I say ‘insightful’, I mean expressing an original opinion and/or providing some insider context), I’ve had to turn to newspapers and Twitter (if you follow anyone make it Italian journalist Gabriele Marcotti (@marcotti).

The only saving grace for TV at World Cup 2010 is that Ian Wright’s stuck in ‘Studio Five’.

And the moral of the story? Just because you’ve played football, it doesn’t mean you’re best equipped to talk about it.

* ‘Pundit mince’ is one of my dad’s catchphrases, used traditionally to undermime Hansen & co.

"Steven? Just coming" - Adam & Joe have a cult following

In the media world, 6 Music is like the radio embodiment of its listeners: intelligent, unassuming, perhaps not the life and soul of the party but the one who brings the best records and has the best chat. In other words, since its birth in 2002 it has quietly gone about its business, delighting music fans, carving out a succession of niche audiences and leaving the vain, attention-seeking to its brash FM cousins.

But if your average (Adam &) Joe hadn’t heard of it before last week, he damn well does now. I won’t bore you with the details that you already know, but last Friday the BBC’s latest strategy review was leaked to the media, and that included the proposed closure of 6 Music. Cue a response that was passionate, bewildered, anguished even, from its 700,000 listeners (who, as you might expect, are exactly the type of people who know how to make themselves heard in the blogo-twito-faceo-sphere.)

I added my own thoughts on the weird reasoning behind the announcement on Under the Radar earlier this week, but here I just want to run through some of the arguments I’ve read elsewhere this week. It’s safe to say that Mark Thompson wasn’t expecting such a vigorous backlash …

Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, from the band’s blog:

It literally is the radio lifeblood for music outside of the mainstream. Not to denigrate Radio’s 1 and 2, but it really is the only station that puts music first, and that’s from a punters point of view and not some bloke in a band. Nowhere else can you hear an archived session track from T Rex juxtaposed next to Midlake’s latest release. As David Bowie, put it … it keeps the spirit of John Peel alive.

Hear hear. And Milo at Gaseous Brain (he’s not in Radiohead but he still deserves a say!) has written a thoughtful dissection of 6 Music that points out its flaws but reiterates its worth:

It is literally the only station we use our DAB radio for, and if it is closed it’s hard to see why having a DAB radio is necessary at all. In fact, I would say the vast majority of people in the UK who own a DAB radio bought it solely to listen to 6Music. If it was on FM things might be different. If it was publicised properly by the BBC things might be different.

Matthew at Song, By Toad meanwhile makes a good point about the huge, unbridgeable gap between underground and mainstream platforms that would be left in 6 Music’s wake:

How the hell are you supposed to progress, to step up, to actually make that massive leap without the developmental step of 6Music, where you can start out with a couple of airplays on one show, maybe get a session on another, and hope to eventually make the step up to a Maida Vale Session and perhaps eventually some Radio1 airplay. Take away 6Music and you have to go from the Song, by Toad podcast to Radio1 in a single leap, which is not only a ludicrous expectation, but also makes the process increasingly arbitrary, because bands develop at different rates.

Nicola Meighan at The List wastes no time in the cultural, political or economic stuff. Instead she lists a succession of reasons and examples why it must be saved:

This week’s 6 Music schedule offers the following: Don Letts’ ace documentary series on reggae powerhouse Trojan Records; interviews with Gorillaz, Fear Factory, Broken Bells and Errors; Steve Lamacq’s pick of unsigned talent.

There are a few priceless videos kicking about as well. Have a swatch of Adam Buxton challenging Mark Thompson to a fight on Channel 4 News …

… or Jeremy Paxman doing much the same (albeit in an interrogative sense) on Newsnight (complete with stifled laughter at the end).

Finally, this infographic by The Guardian illustrates the situation rather nicely.

Who’d have thought that 6 Music could provoke this kind of backlash? Not me. Or Mr Thompson, judging by the look on his face.

So The Wire just finished on BBC2 last night, and – unless I’m missing something – it appears to me like Auntie missed a fantastic opportunity.

By now you will have already read or heard  many people raving about this landmark American TV series, so you hardly need another recommendation from me. You’ll either have watched the first episode, struggled with the Baltimore street lingo, and given up; or you’ll have stuck it out to the end, become addicted, and will now be composing a blog post / Tweet / Facebook update something along the lines of this one.

But let me just squeeze in a bit of slavering fandom. The best TV series I ever watched was The Sopranos. I honestly didn’t believe it would be bettered. The Wire is better than The Sopranos. It’s more ambitious and more realistic, with better writing and acting. Where The Sopranos had maybe two or three standout performances (Tony, Paulie, Christopher), The Wire is bursting with bravura turns (McNulty, Bubbles, Omar, Dennis, Stringer, Gus, Clay, Bunny, etc).

Anyway, like I said, there’s absolutely no need for more hyperventilating about The Wire. All I want to say is that the BBC have shown a massive miscalculation of judgment in the scant scheduling status they bestowed upon ‘the greatest TV series of all time’.

It was shown on BBC2, after 11pm, on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, throughout its epic, five-season span. In other words, the very antithesis of peak time. Remember how it felt to sit down every Sunday night at 10 o’clock to watch the new Sopranos – it was an event, a great end to the weekend.

But The Wire has passed Britain by. Even I, who took a few seasons to fully catch the bug but am now a fully paid up fan, could not commit to sit down at those times and watch three episodes a week.

I can only assume (and hope) that the BBC were somehow constrained by some kind of licencing stranglehold that dictated how it could be broadcast.

If not, the Big British Castle has well and truly shot itself in the foot. And that’s one shooting that had nothing to do with Chris and Snoop.