Firstly, I’ve not written as much here as I wanted to. Even worse though, I have hardly written anything at all about my favourite show of all time ever!

Arrested Development is still making me laugh consistently every week. This is one of the great things about American TV. As a Brit, I’m amazed by some of the things that are coming out of the states these days. American primtime remains the most exciting tv market in the world. The only problem is, if shows don’t live up to the expectations of the networks they end up getting the plug pulled.

Arrested Development has so far won five Emmy awards. Including the Emmy for best comedy. Yet there are twitchings over a FOX hq that have caused the season two episode order to be cut back to 18, which is four episodes short of what most people would consider a full run.

My problem with this is that Arrested is outperfoming all other comedy on the FOX network. In fact, it seems to be outperforming quite a lot of FOX’s output. And after all, FOX is not in an especially strong position at the moment. It doesn’t have huge amounts of high quality comedy, and what it does have seems to consist of three animated shows. Family Guy, The Simpsons and American Dad. The latter of those shows did good numbers after the Superbowl. But as many have pointed out, a 22 minute video of paint drying would get 10 million viewers after the Superbowl. After all, it had a lead in on 80 million viewers, statistically more people would pass out drunk than American Dad got.

Still, my main concern is AD, which at the moment FOX insist isn’t cancelled. However, as the good people over at The OP point out, not cancelled is quite different to renewed. And my main point is, Arrested Development is doing great in the ratings. Especially alongside the rest of FOX’s comedy. Here are the fast overnight figures:

“King of the Hill” (households: 3.0/5, #16; adults 18-49: 2.2, #14),
“Malcolm in the Middle” (households: 3.4/6, #T12; adults 18-49: 2.7, #T9),
“The Simpsons” (households: 4.9/7, #10; adults 18-49: 3.8, #T6),
“Arrested Development” (households: 3.4/5, #T12; adults 18-49: 2.7, #T9)
“Family Guy” (repeats) (households: 3.1/5, #15; adults 18-49: 2.4, #13) and
“The Simpsons” (households: 3.3/5, #14; adults 18-49: 2.5, #12).