Why is TV review­ing dying on its knees? The Daily Tele­graph has just bid farewell to its TV reviewer. Is tele­vi­sion no longer worthy of cri­ti­cism? Buzz. Dumb question.

What actu­ally has happened is that review­ing has been bypassed alto­gether. Take Chan­nel 5’s Stran­gelove: Mar­ried to the Eif­fel Tower*, a pro­gramme which fea­tured women who claimed to be mar­ried to — yes — the Eif­fel Tower and the Ber­lin Wall.

24 May: The Inde­pend­ent has a piece from the documentary-maker.

27 May: The Tele­graph car­ries a sober news account of just one of the women — Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer. No link to her web­site though.

27 May: The Sun (‘cemen­ted’ the rela­tion­ship, brick-teasers etc.) car­ries a less sober account. The Mir­ror mor­al­ises, invok­ing Sex And The City.

28 May: It makes China Daily.

Guard­ian read­ers might have come across Berliner-Mauer before in Adrian Searle’s account of the Ber­lin Bien­nial, where she is the sub­ject of a film by artist Lars Lau­mann.

Berliner-Mauer turns out to be some­thing of a self-publicist. Back in 1997, as plain old Eija-Riitta Eklof, she was fea­tured in the Inde­pend­ent for her love of guil­lot­ines.

But her own efforts were as noth­ing com­pared to a bit of pre-programme pub­li­city re-packaged and syn­dic­ated. The pro­gramme airs in the UK on 4 June. Review­ing by then will feel a little late…

*Pro­duced by Blink Films, the com­pany set up by former Chan­nel 5 dir­ector of pro­grammes Dan Cham­bers. Small world, telly.