I do not know why, but about a fortnight ago BBC4, one of the digital TV channels that is supposed to reach my television set through the new digital box I purchased earlier this year, stopped working. All the other channels are working okay, but not BBC4. Bad signal, said my television, when I interrogated it with my remote control about this unfortunate circumstance.

As Sod's Law would have it, BBC4 is, of all my new digital channels, the one I am least happy to be losing. It is the nearest thing to a culture channel that free-to-view TV offers in Britain. It does not supply continuously wonderful programmes, but there is from time to time something I greatly want to see, such as a programme last week about the legendary conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra Yevgeny Mravinsky. And I couldn't. Damn.

Well, now BBC 4 is back. It has reappeared as mysteriously as it disappeared. Digital signals being what they are – something you either receive in their entirety or do not receive at all – there is no cracking or buzzing or blurring or fragmenting of the picture or of the sound. It is back in full. Nevertheless there is something rather old fashioned about this. I feel like some radio ham who sometimes get lucky and able to talk to his friend in Canada, but sometimes not, depending on what is happening in the Heavyside Layer, or some such magical location.

So this evening I've been luxuriating in my rediscovered BBC4. I started by watching and listening to Ian Bostridge singing Schubert and Fauré at the Edinburgh Festival, then a programme about Vladimir Putin (who I think looks a lot like this actor), and now I'm watching a programme about TV political thrillers. They are now making the interesting point that, now that New Labour is starting seriously to fray at the edges, this genre is back in business again. Is "New Laborur" a deeper, darket, less benign force than has until recently been supposed?

"We are naturally suspicious even of this government" says a smooth looking writer in a jumper. "Even." I love that. They're "too capitalist", it seems. This is in connection with the drama State of Play which is now in the process of being shown. You can feel the traditional left losing patience with "their" government.

It's good to have BBC4 back. I was thinking of clambering up onto the roof of my apartment block to see if .I could improve matters by jiggling about with the aerial. Now, touch wood, that won't be necessary. (Maybe one of my neighbours has done this.)

BBC4 often repeats things. Maybe they'll repeat the Mravinsky programme. I hope so.