Riveting viewing supersedes end of world

RIGHT then, the silly season has ended so it's on to the serious stuff – and hopefully, during the madness that did not see the world end, DStv was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Present and Future, with bountiful offerings when it comes to viewing pleasure.

So, first off in the quest for something "new", there was a treat for Gordon Ramsay fans in the form of Ramsay's Hotel Hell, the first episode of which went out on Channel 120 at 8pm on Monday. Frankly, it's more of the same with the emphasis taken off kitchen nightmares and placed onto the whole (fairly horrid, it has to be admitted) establishment. Ramsay's Hotel Hell follows Ramsay as he travels across America attempting to fix horrid hotels, awful inns and bed & breakfasts. In decidedly anti-Ramsay vein, what was surprising and touching about the first episode was when the foul-mouthed chef offered to pay for the culinary education of Donald "Scooter" Telford, a chef with ambition but with a medically disadvantaged background.

All Ramsay asked for in return for a lot of dough (pun intended) was a loaf of Telford's bread. If you can get past the swearing at least it makes a change from re-run after re-run of Kitchen Nightmares.

Something else that is new-ish is Private Practice, the spin-off of the far superior Grey's Anatomy, the former slipping back onto our screens at 8.30pm on Tuesday, being rightfully downgraded to the M-Net series (channel 114) for having lost lots of its earlier wow factor. For fans, though, it is probably still worth tuning in. Of Grey's itself, which ended on its usual cliffhanger, there's absolutely no sign of when it will return, so the search for other new highlights resumes.

As it's a triskaidekaphobia year, it could also be worth having a look at Concordia: One Year, which will be screened on National Geographic at 10pm tomorrow.

At 9.45 pm on Friday January 13, last year the Costa Concordia cruise ship, packed with more than 4000 passengers, capsized off the island of Giglio, Italy, killing 32 people.

One year on, to mark the first anniversary of the tragedy, this film will use previously unseen footage, expert testimony and CGI animation to explore the real story of the worst maritime disaster in recent history.