It's the time of year when the BBC seems to have spent its budget on late night programming with three months left to go, and nothing but dodgy TV movies with which to fill their broadcast hours... and how glad I am.

In as much as I love a good movie (one day I'll divulge my top ten - Mary Poppins certain to be there, but no, Jim, no Mallrats), I'm equally drawn to a bad one, and never more so than after a late shift in the newsroom.

No, there can be few better ways to follow a long day letting nation speak peace unto nation, than to collapse in front of a televisual potboiler starring someone you've never heard of.

More often than not they're American, and if I'm especially lucky, based on a true story. Woman's young son is kidnapped by her batty religious mother and moved all the way across the US? Check. Biopic of one of Hef's first Playboy bunnies? Check. Young man murders his whole family to inherit his father's trucking business? Check. Yup, they've all kept me up way past my bedtime.

And just the other night we were treated to Atomic Train, starring Rob Lowe as a train expert trying to stop a runaway engine bound for Denver carrying a Soviet nuclear warhead. But to no avail. Everything that could go wrong did, and Colorado found all its future winters would be of the nuclear kind. I'm sure the film was meant to act as some kind of morality tale for the Great American Public, but can't quite work out the lesson one was supposed to learn.

So why am I drawn to movies like this? My father would be so ashamed. They're a dreadful habit, cultural chasms, utterly unedifying, bereft of benefit, the worst (or best?) examples of why too much TV is bad for you.

And long may they continue.