As far as the general populace is concerned, the number of significant social occasions in Finland can be counted on one hand. In fact, make that one finger, since there’s only really a single event which is followed by any significant percentage of normal people. I refer, of course, to the Independence Day festivities chez President on 6th December. This is the day when we celebrate, firstly, breaking the chains of Russian oppression in 1917, and, secondly, fighting off the Soviet hordes in the Winter War of 1939-40. In practice, it’s the latter occasion which is remembered most vividly by the Finns.

I was wrong, I admit it. Last week I optimistically suggested that rock-bottom had been hit, television-wise, with the broadcast of the incredibly bad Hotter Than My Daughter on Liv. Clearly stung by my assertion, rival channel Sub TV has upped (downed?) the ante by scheduling the outrageous Billion $$ Girl for the New Year. Even for Finland – a country that loves Formula 1 almost as much as disgusting sausages – this show about Tamara Ecclestone, daughter of F1 supremo Bernie, is pushing it.

Good news! The televisual nadir has finally been reached! There’s been some tough competition what with X-Factor, Talent Suomi and Dance Your Ass Off all being strong contenders for the Television Show Best Demonstrating The Decline Of Western Civilisation award. However I’m quietly confident that I’ve identified the most mind-numbingly banal show ever to have been broadcast in the shape of Hotter than My Daughter, shown every weekday on Liv, God help us.

One of the best documentary series ever is drawing to a close over the next week. Louis Theroux’s documentaries have been on Yle Teema since the summer, so unfortunately if you haven’t caught it yet you’ve missed the ones about the ‘Adult Entertainment’ industry, shopping-TV, Black Nationalists, and the truly touching Demolition Derby episode. The idea is pretty simple. Lanky, bespectacled and British, Louis investigates unusual sub-cultures in different parts of the world, mainly in the US. It’s part anthropological, part sociological, and part fly-on-the-wall docu drama.

Tattoos. Some people love ’em, some people hate ’em. Personally, I’m rather ambivalent about scoring ink into my skin, but I can kind of understand the point. The best tattoos, I reckon, tend to be the ones that you can’t see – they’re the private ones with meanings too deep to be shared with the public. Tony Halme’s infamous ‘exit only’ ink stain, for example. Nothing, on the other hand, is quite as pretentious as covering all your limbs with archaic Chinese characters (‘egg fried rice’) or extravagant drawings of dragons relating to momentous occasions in one’s life (viz. “I got this one when I graduated, this one when I got laid for the first time, oh and this one after my first alcohol poisoning. That’s my favourite.”)

Have you ever wondered if a room can be painted with dynamite? Is it possible to catch a bullet with your teeth? Could MacGyver really have built an ultralight airplane from bamboo, trash bags, duct tape and a cement mixer? Well, your queries are about to be answered. Mythbusters is a show that takes urban myths and performs vaguely scientific tests to determine their veracity. This show works because most of the experiments they perform involve blowing stuff up, manipulating potentially lethal animals, building mad stuff or firing semi-automatic weaponry.

Being the father of a one-and-a-half-year-old I seem to watch way more children’s television than I should. Much of it these days seems to be computer-created soulless rubbish, so thank goodness then for those perennial Finnish favourites the Moomins, broadcast weekend and Monday mornings on TV2. Our little man and I now hop joyfully from out of bed, make some porridge and settle down for some early morning psychedelic troll action. They say that the Devil has all the best tunes, but kids get all the best telly programmes.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Ted. Ted is the senior vice-president of R&D for one of the biggest companies in America, Veridian Dynamics. It’s hard to be specific about what Veridian Dynamics do because they do everything from industrial equipment to defence technology. They are extremely wealthy and prepared to do anything to make money, including weaponising pumpkins, the dastardly fiends. Only three countries in the world are richer than Veridian. Their latest product is an office chair called the Focus Master. It’s so uncomfortable it raises productivity by ten per cent, as well as causing madness in its users.

TV-watching Finns are in shock. The tabloids are in uproar. The longest-running telly show in Finland is about to be axed. Well, I say ‘about to be’ when in fact December 8th 2012 is when the final episode of Kotikatu will be aired on Yle1; and I say ‘axed’ whereas ‘put down’ might be more appropriate. The reason for the early warning, according to Yle, is that since Kotikatu is such a beloved national institution the great unwashed need more than a year to get their heads around the show’s not-so-imminent demise.

Money. We all want it, and Hjallis Harkimo wants you to make him some. Harkimo, the pugilist-resembling boss of the Jokerit ice hockey team as well as Hartwall Arena developer, sports manager and round-the-world single-handed yacht race veteran, is looking for a development manager for his Vierumäki-based sports institute. This is his third season as The Apprentice’s top dog. The previous two seasons involved him looking for a sales manager and a construction manager, possibly leading a cynic to think that the whole show is aimed entirely as a cut-price recruiting vehicle for Harkimo’s empire.

It’s not easy being a TV reviewer, mainly because sometimes the airwaves are as arid as the Gobi desert and finding stuff to write about is a largely impossible task. Every now and again, however, a show appears that is so sphincter-clenchingly embarrassing, so mind-numbingly inept, that it practically writes your column for you. Such an event occurred this week with the first episode of the awful Dance Your Ass Off (Tanssi peppu pieneksi in Finnish) on Liv.

With the arrival of autumn comes a bunch of new series intended, one hopes, to make us feel more optimistic about the lengthening nights and dropping temperatures. Nelonen’s current great TV hope is Blue Blood, the latest in a long line of shows about police people. If you’re British you might have thought it’s about royal folk what with the name and all but given the esteem with which cops are held in American social mythology it might as well be.