I’m baffled. Speechless. Utterly lost for words. Shell-shocked. I’m not sure what I just watched. Was it a comedy? Was it a soap? Was it an unbelievably intelligent and witty satire? I have no idea. I’m totally, completely mystified. I am, at this point, questioning both my sanity and my acumen.

What happened? It was a normal enough evening. The kiddies went to bed, I sat down for a quick flick through the channels. Aħbarijiet. An ad break. And then. Pause. A list of actors. Dan il-programm fih tqieghid tal-prodott. A twinkly logo. A load of people dancing. Another pause. And then. This.

My jaw dropped. Even as I write this, I still can’t close my mouth which may lead me to having to claim health insurance. Never in my my most debauched and corrupt nightmares could I have imagined acting so wooden, scenery so stilted, continuity quite so disjointed as...this. It’s a twilight zone of clichéd gestures, corny dirty looks, false emotions and forced dramatics.

I would call it acting by numbers, but I would be abusing of the phrase because I don’t think I saw anything even remotely like acting during that hour’s television.

I imagine this is how they made the programme: The director said “Act”.  Then the director said “Now turn around”, then “Now act again. Move your arm up.” then “Speak. Now move your arm down again. Now act again. Walk away. Turn around. Give a dirty look. Turn around. Walk away. Cut”. And they repeated this formula with every actor and for every scene for as long as it took to film the episode.

I would have laughed but my brain had gone into full protection mode. I didn’t see even one character that was not a clichéd-off-the-scale caricature, from the bald office idiot, to the transvestite sisters, to the ruthless new manager [Eileen Montesin's daughter is Eileen Montesin's boss and they look like twins from a different era], to the bitter-and-slightly-crazy mother-in-law.

An ad-break. A sigh of relief. Even the ad for corned beef is a panacea. (Sorry but I have to get this off my chest; who uses corned beef to make a bolognese? Is it a part of my quaint Maltese culture I’ve lost somewhere along the way?)

Anyway, back to the horny grannies trying to steal a podgy young lad from each other. Yes. You read that right. Horny grannies trying to steal a podgy young lad from each other. You think Four Weddings is car crash television? I’m watching a pile-up on the Regional Road stretching all the way from Kappara to the airport from the roof of the tunnel while swinging my legs over the edge of the wall.

Who watches this kind of thing anyway? Who actually sits down of an evening thinking ‘Oh I’ve got a nice cup of tea and a biscuit and it’s about to start. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” Presumably they’ve just had corned beef made into spaghetti bolegnese for their dinner, whoever they are.