LIKE you, I have a television.
I don't know what yours is like but the one in the corner of my living room is a bit of a throwback.
It's a vintage Philips, a hulking cathode ray tube refugee in a land where svelte LED sets with pin-sharp screens the size of billboards have became affordable.
And there it sits, a giant tea chest moulded from glass and acres of silver plastic, heavy enough to make you imagine its innards are filled with solid lead.
My TV and I used to see more of each other, but for several years we have had an on-off relationship.
If the office chit-chat - though obviously very little of that goes on in a serious working environment like The Irish News - is anything to go by, then my TV has mostly been off while those of colleagues and real people, some of whom are also journalists, have been switched on.
That's not to say that my TV is never turned on or that I never get to watch it.
Indeed, I yield to no man in my admiration for CBeebies, which is the most convincing evidence that the BBC can rely upon to prove that the licence fee is worth every penny.
I'm sure I'm not the only parent who has fond memories of dozing off during In The Night Garden while Makka Pakka was busy rearranging stones and the Tombliboos were looking for their trousers.
And now that my son is a little older, I can't deny I'm also enjoying the excuse to revisit Scooby-Doo with him on Saturday mornings.
I even have Sky, though this investment was only necessary in the face of extreme provocation from the BBC when it lost the rights to show every Formula One race.
This has proved a mixed blessing. Sky does a far better job of broadcasting Grand Prix than the BBC ever did but I'm resentful about the fact that I don't have the time to watch everything on the Sky Sports F1 channel.
But apart from Tree Fu Tom, Swashbuckle, other occasional children's television shows and a season of F1 races, my TV and I have barely been on nodding terms for some time. Time - or lack thereof - is probably the biggest reason but as I've got older I've also become much, much choosier.
I resist, with every fibre of my being, shows like Strictly Come Dancing and anything which features Ant and Dec.
I've become bored with cookery shows and I would rather have a beardie from Nelson McCausland than watch any soap opera; in fact, a full-Nelson would be more entertaining than whatever is going on in Albert Street and Coronation Square.
But it's not all dross.
There's Mad Men - it took me years to get upto-date with it.
And after getting hooked on Andrea Camilleri's wonderful novels, I recorded every episode of Inspector Montalbano broadcast on BBC Four, a feat which took about two years and conducted more in hope than expectation.
That I've only been able to watch six episodes is beside the point, as is the fact that the BBC is already repeating Montalbanos I haven't seen even once.
Also on BBC Four, the final series of Wallander - which I got to view about two months after broadcast - was painfully superb, charting the detective's struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Wallander is one of those shows which underlines that when television takes itself seriously, it can also be worth taking seriously.
Another which takes itself seriously is The Honourable Woman, a BBC Two drama that might not be a barrel of laughs but which is 'must watch' television.
You can tell this is Very Serious Television from the moment the opening credits roll, with a sense of gravitas that makes Newsnight look like Glee.
Each instalment is an atmospheric 60 minute master class in acting, plot, pace and direction.
A rare alchemy is at work here but what helps lift The Honourable Woman to pure gold is its timing.
Centred on Israel and Palestine, specifically Gaza, this fiendishly complex - and at times violent - political thriller is being screened as a deadly and all-too-real conflict is being visited upon the region. It adds a layer of pathos to a drama that already depicts the Israel and Palestine situation with humanity.
Belfast actor Stephen Rea, playing a weary spy master, puts in a superb performance yet he, like the rest of the excellent cast, is but a satellite fortunate enough to have entered the orbit of US actor Maggie Gyllenhaal - she is the dramatic heart and soul of the piece, putting in a career-best turn as Nessa Stein, the eponymous Honourable Woman.
It's dense and mesmeric drama; the storyline snaking this way and that but like a Mobius strip it always ends up back where it started - with Nessa Stein.
The fifth episode was screened last night and there are three more to go.
We know when it will end, but not where. And shouldn't that be an essential element in a serious drama?
Either way, The Honourable Woman is television worth taking the time to have a relationship with.