It's the shame, more than anything else, that keeps me awake at night. That, and the intense feelings of worthlessness. How could my judgment have been so poor? What will my family think of me? What happens if my boss finds out?

Yes, it's that time of year again in Los Angeles - the time when executives in mirrored office buildings are forced to make decisions that result in livelihoods being ruined and careers destroyed. It's the time of year, in other words, when fledgeling TV shows that first aired in September (the beginning of the “season”) are quietly laid to rest, thus disappearing from our screens for ever. Alas, for the newly unemployed cast and crew of such ill-fated offerings as Do Not Disturb, Easy Money and The Ex List - among others - it will not be very Merry Christmas at all.

Of course, this annual ritual of network bloodletting shouldn't affect me, the viewer.

But this year was different, because for the first time I can remember, I became a fan - indeed a staunch defender - of a show that was terminated. It was entitled My Own Worst Enemy and starred Christian Slater as a nerdy office worker with a brain implant that gives him a split personality, thus allowing him to work undetected as a secret agent whenever his government employers activate him, except that - bear with me - his implant keeps malfunctioning, thus resulting in his nerdy office worker persona continuing to “wake up” halfway through deadly spy missions in exotic foreign countries.

Genius, right? No, the reviewers didn't think so either. They ridiculed it, in fact. And by association, all those who continued tuning in, week after week, because it was enough for their single-digit IQs. Embarrassed? I can hardly bear to leave the house.

The problem, I think, is that I live in a town where your judgment on popular culture doesn't just matter - it makes or breaks you. Knowing what's good and what's not dictates your place in the social hierarchy. If you raved about The Shield after the first season, if you unashamedly tuned in to American Idol in the days when it still had two MCs, and if you repeatedly attempted to explain and justify the premise of Mad Men to your colleagues before it won all those Emmys - chances are you're running something important by now. If, on the other hand, you became fully engaged by the plot of My Own Worst Enemy, chances are you're an employment liability.

There's a way of avoiding this fate, of course: never watch anything until it's entered its second season, then rent the first season on DVD, and say you knew it would be a success all along.

One-flop wonder

At least My Own Worst Enemy will have managed to get nine episodes on the air before it is finally yanked from the schedules next week. Some TV shows get torpedoed halfway through a season. Others are such unmitigated disasters that they get pulled after just one episode.

Curiously, Britain is particularly good at making these one-episode wonders. Spike Milligan's gratuitously racist 1975 sitcom The Melting Pot was one such abomination. When it comes to almost criminal levels of poor judgment, however, nothing can top the Galaxy channel's 1990 sitcom about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun living together blissfully in the suburbs - until a Jewish couple moves in next door.

The title? Heil, Honey I'm Home!

For repeat's sake

Cancelling shows is an expensive business, of course. Which means that America's big TV networks are doing everything possible to keep even their sickliest offerings on the air. In the old days, ratings from Nielsen Media Research were considered the sole measure of a show's success. Today, network executives try to convince advertisers of a show's worth by using everything from Google search statistics to the number of people who rented DVDs of old episodes. They have a point, I suppose: I've had a digital video recorder for so long now, I can barely remember the last time I watched a show live. So how much can ratings matter?

Times are so financially desperate, however, that the networks are going even farther than just trying to keep shows alive: they're continuing to broadcast stockpiled episodes of shows that have long since been cancelled. Which is a bit like living with your wife after a divorce because you've already bought a house together. It also serves to heighten the humiliation of people like me. Of course I want to know what happens on next week's instalment of My Own Worst Enemy. But will I watch it? Only if I can be sure that no one will ever find out.

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