CHANNEL INFINITY +1 (Shows from somewhere down the programme guide)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Virgin 1

Daily, 8pm (and +1, repeated 10am following day)

Wait, wait, come back. Honestly, this show's good. One of the 90s Trekkie series that followed the Next Generation, it is the only one that didn't feature a crew essentially drifting episodically in space. The characters are on a space station, one that for much of the run is at war (particularly in the final series, which begins tonight. 

It's interesting to see a 90s sci-fi show dealing with the morals of dealing with terrorism, conducting wars, religious fanaticism etc., 10 years before Battlestar Gallactica was hailed as allegory of Iraq.

It's also tremendous fun, with loads of familiar faces (if sometimes covered in moulded latex alien noses and ears), often from other cult shows and films – there's Andrew Robinson (the psycho Scorpio from Dirty Harry); Jeffrey Combs (from Reanimator), who plays three separate aliens (different ears); Armin Shimerman (from Buffy); and Colm Meaney (from The Van). And, in Avery Brooks as Captain Sisko, it had a charismatic African-American leader who constantly talks like he's in a Shakespeare play, long before that became fashionable.