Okay, so on a scale of one to a billion, how good is this Bleak House business on the ABC on Sunday nights?

Whoever wrote that must know what they're doing.

After watching Planet Earth with David Attenborough and not knowing whether I'm on the side of the snow leopard (who has to eat, you know) or the startled, dancing rock elk with the unwieldy horns and the slippy-slippy down the slope kind of lifestyle, I sit in front of Dickens, riveted and yet slightly distracted by the central question of what the hell is going on?

Unbearably good television. Especially if you like your television to be smarter than you are. Dickens and Sorkin being excellent examples. And, obviously, Everybody Loves Raymond was smarter than I was, because I just did not understand a single thing about that show.

Anyway, so this weekend I did not spend in the usual manner. I did not see a film or a play (not even a terrible one that I can spend the rest of the week complaining about). I read some of Crime and Punishment , but apart from that, I did nothing of interest in a cultural sense whatsoever.

Instead, I cashed in on the fact that Nerissa, one of the many friends of mine who found themselves cast in I Could Be Anybody , works at the Werribee Zoo.

So, in answer to the question "What did you do at work this week?" Nerissa is able to answer:

"I'm designing an enclosure for a critically endangered species of bandicoot".

In response to which I am able to say: "Er. Good. Well... I wrote... well actually... no... I didn't write... I started to write... this thing... for... Never mind. Are there any positions going in, you know, the canteen or something at the zoo at the moment?"

I often find other people's jobs interesting, but this one was an excellent one to be a beneficiary of. We drove around in a Safari jeep and made friends with all sorts of people, including a fairly grumpy hippo whose party trick was to poo through his rotating tail, so as to fan his excrement as far and wide as possible. Territorial, mainly, although arguably quite artistic too.

In conclusion, a hippo pooing through a rotating tail is approximately fifty times more interesting than mainstream theatre in Melbourne, and works on many levels metaphorically, too.

Give them an arts grant. And a festival. Please.