Actor Liam Neeson marked his ninth week on the run from George Lucas and the Lucasfilm casting department this month, after the Star Wars director confirmed that Neeson would indeed be expected to reprise his Jedi role for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode 3.

Neeson was reportedly unaware that he was obligated to appear in the two Star Wars prequel sequels, and despite personal assurances over the phone from Lucas himself that the role would involve nothing more than standing around looking ghostly and fey, whilst covering up various plotholes through reams of strained exposition, the actor was less than enthusiastic. Fortunately his desperate screams of "Nooooo!" down the phoneline were dubbed into Episode 2, and on that occasion Neeson was let off with just a warning.

However, with the reward for his capture now reaching a cool one million dollars (plus a strip of Carrie Fishers anti-giggle tape from starwars.com if you own both DVDs), media insiders are speculating that the Irish actor will be back gripping his Laser Sword soon enough. Rick McCallum added: "If he struggles, just bring us the head. Our boys down at Industrial Light and Magic will do the rest".

Following the news that many American television dramas are ditching their serialised formats in favour of a more audience-friendly, self-contained approach (which will still make sense even after the networks take a 2 month break between screening episodes), it has been announced that the techno-thriller 24 will see some radical changes in its new season.

"You could tell things we're getting out of hand when Fox had to run an ad-break in the middle of the 'Previously on 24' bit at the start of each episode," explains 24's creators, Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow. "The same thing happened to the folks over at Farscape - their last 2-parter turned out to be just the one new episode - part 1 was just the recap."

The new season of 24, which was originally going to see CTU Agent Jack Bauer saving the silver-backed Gorilla species from extinction, will now see him solving 24 completely unrelated crimes - all in the space of a single day.

"Unfortunately, you can't infiltrate a terrorist cell or solve a homicide in an hour of real-time," sighs Keifer Sutherland, who plays Jack. "This means we'll be seeing my character dealing with situations which can be realistically sorted out in about 42 minutes or less."

The new season begins at 8am with Jack Bauer desperately searching for his car keys while Kim holds up the bathroom, and it culminates in a trip to the doctors 23 hours later to deal with his mounting insomnia.

Other series set to follow this trend of self-containment include the reality show Survivor , which will shipwreck 12 complete strangers on a desert island each and every week, only to kick 11 back off 20 minutes later; the decision based on nothing more than a gut feeling.

9am-10am: Jack hunts down the person who stole the milk from his doorstep.

10am-11am: Can Jack make it to McDonalds before they stop serving breakfast?

2pm-3pm: Jack tracks down some guy who didn't rewind the tape before returning it to Blockbusters.

7pm-8pm: Jack interrogates the pizza delivery guy who insists that he didn't order a garlic bread over his cellphone.

The hit reality show of last year, The Bakers , is back for a brand new series next month. As ever, the two lovable semi in-work actors are captured by the cameras going about their daily business, including such memorable occasions as their invite to the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations:

Tom: "I can scarcely believe that I'm about to meet the Queen. The bloody Queen! I mean, if you'd told me 50 years ago that one day I would receive an invitation, albeit accidentally, to Buckingham Palace... I mean, back then I was just a poor Liverpudlian boy standing in a circle of other poor Liverpudlian boys, tugging furiously and synchronously at our engorged members. I recall one boy, Mickey The Mule we used to call him..."

Colin: "Mule? Mule? MULE? Bore me not with the onanistic details of your youth! We're about to impress palms with Her Majesty. Little can YOU imagine the repercussions if we steadfastly ignore protocol in favour of masturbatory circumlocutions!"

Tom: "Oh bugger off Colin. I'm too bloody shagged out for your music hall whippet shit. Anyway, here comes the old harpy..."

Colin: "Wait a minute... look, who's that on the roof, playing the National Anthem on the electric spoons? Could it be... It is! It's bloody Sylvester!"