As if demons weren't enough...

Last week Five announced that the eighth and final season of Charmed wouldn't be shown on the home of CSI and Everybody Hates Chris like the previous seven were, only for Channel 4 to pick up the ball and expose terrestrial fans of quietly alluring Piper, voluptuously sexy Paige and not-quite-as-bewitching-as-the-other-two-but-still-pretty-hot-is-that-all-right-Jen? Phoebe to what happened after they faked their own deaths and made everyone see three not-quite-as-attractive ladies in their place. This is actually pretty good going compared to Alias, Xena: Warrior Princess or Angel (Five did finish La Femme Nikita, but we were talking about shows that I actually watch... which would technically also dismiss Angel, but that's another thing), and at least those fans who don't have LivingTV will get to see the final season. And for better or worse, Billie.
The trouble is, the Charmed Ones have to suffer the fate of Stargate SG-1, Star Trek: Enterprise and The O.C., and be shown as part of T4. T4 is a Sunday morning-to-afternoon programming strand aimed at teenagers and people recovering from Saturday nights on the tiles with grating presenters, interviews and music interspersed with TV shows, and as well as the dreaded credit squeezes and verbal diarrhoea in place of (not even over - in place of) music, the time of day means episodes can and have been (and will be) edited. One staggeringly pointless scenario had the car hitting that surfer dude in The O.C. cut from the episode it appeared in and yet we still saw it in subsequent "Previously on The O.C." bits... so what was the point again?
The eighth season itself isn't as dreadful as some have said, even if "Battle Of The Sexes" was a real step backwards (one of the good things about the show is that like the novels of Mary Higgins Clark, it was a female-powered thing that never tried to get on a soapbox or felt the need to attack men - this episode was a very jarring misstep, and the fact that the villain was female didn't change that) - even Billie's quest for her sister isn't unbearable, and the episode that was inspired by Mr & Mrs Smith was actually better than the film itself. And best of all, that damn cat's finally gone from the opening credits. The Halliwells deserve better than to be squashed in between inane interviews and Hollyoaks (don't ask) - but they still haven't had the treatment poor Sydney Bristow got from British TV. Blub.