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Today  is the final day Remotely Interesting will be published for the year.

It is also the final time the column, in its present form at least, will be published full stop.

After resentfully dragging myself to the computer to write 450 words about television a full 353 times, I am taking this year-end opportunity to retire from this line of work and have a nice nap on a Sunday evening instead.

So what, if anything, have we learned from the last seven or so years of immersion in the medium?

I like to think nothing at all.

I don't know why.

Mostly, it is best not to attempt to find meaning in things, lest you become confused, or worse, passionately interested in something.

But perhaps it is worth at this pointless juncture to look back on the highlights of the last seven years.

Probably the best thing is the way televisions have become extremely big.

I like a really big television, on which to watch shows.

Also, there are so many different ways to watch it, but I can't be bothered writing about them.

This isn't going well.

Let's start again.

Television.

Television is the great and enduring medium that touches all our lives.

In the last seven years of writing about television my life has been deeply enriched by the experience.

There have been so many fine shows, and I can't go past outstanding offerings such as Breaking Bad, which is without doubt a shining light in the history of all things televisual.

But this terrific medium does not just touch our lives by providing fictional entertainment of the very highest order.

It also provides a platform for the cultures and languages of the world to live, and to breathe.

I would like now to segue into a television preview by clearing my throat.

Ahem.

Here we go.

In 2017, television viewers will be able to get the year under way with something very new to New Zealand.

Broadcaster Maori Television is bringing Gaelic language drama to our sets from January 1 with Irish show Corp & Anam.

The show follows TV crime correspondent Cathal Mac Iarnain (Diarmud de Faoite), the terrier of the newsroom in which he works.

He'll stop at nothing to dig out the truth behind every story, regardless of who it hurts.

Corp & Anam (which means body and soul) is grey and gritty, its opening credits featuring wilting flowers and burning cars.

Irish boy racers are tearing up the Celtic tarmac and screaming at each other in Gaelic, the only recognisable language to New Zealand ears being a word beginning with the letter ``f''.

It looks good.

And that's what it's all about.

Thank you and goodnight.

 - by Charles Lougherty