For most of the last few years, we have had our television delivered by cable, which gave us a basic service of 50 or 60 (or frankly, who really knows how many) channels, of which we probably only watched about three.

Not being content with that, we replaced the cable with a satellite dish. This now gives us hundreds of channels to ignore, which is a great improvement. There are also about 100 channels of audio (formerly called radio), which we also never use.

But it still seemed worthwhile, because it is only via satellite that we were able to get BBC America. This is the BBC's channel here in the US and - we were hoping - a sight for sore goggle eyes after the vast wasteland that is American television. By way of example, and a cheap laugh, last night I could have watched something called The World's Biggest Explosions. I did not make that up.

I would have imagined, and wanted, BBC America to be a kind of BBC Three, a collection of what is currently showing in Britain (at least on the Beeb), with some greatest hits thrown in. Instead, what we have here is a woolly, unkempt collection of programmes that always leaves us slightly reeling.

For example, in the first week of our new service (but it seemed much, much longer) all there was to watch was Red Dwarf - and I mean that's all there was. Now, Red Dwarf is a fine programme, as far as it goes, but it really gains nothing by being shown over and over for days at a time.

A lot of BBC America falls into this category - programmes that are repeated far too often, usually consecutively. It's as if we are being given the omnibus edition of every obscure thing they've got: for example, Changing Rooms, a show in which neighbours redecorate one room in each other's homes, using only a washing-up liquid bottle and some sticky-backed plastic, or so it seems.

The only other kind of programming is, it seems, the lucky dip.

Shows come and go, with no discernable logic. Absolutely Fabulous is on at 7 p.m. - except when it isn't. Parkinson is on Saturday night, sometimes. Other times, he's on twice in a row. Perhaps it's me. Maybe without a TV Times, I don't watch enough telly to figure out what the pattern is. But it doesn't help when they take a relatively current programme like The Fast Show, chop it up into little pieces, and then name the pieces Gotcha! or something similar. Exactly what was the point of that?

My other problem with all this is that it seems to bear almost no relationship to current life, British or otherwise. Apart from the World News, which is fab as always, a viewer would have no way of knowing if he were watching in 1999 or 1979. What I would like to see is some sense that we are watching what Britain is watching. Show us Have I Got News For You, for example, and let us work out the references ourselves. As it is, it's not at all clear if this is a channel for ex-pats, or for anglophiles, or just for Americans indulging a Disney sense of what Britain is like.

Though one thing Britain seems to be like, judging from this channel, is desaturated and fuzzy. In crossing the Atlantic, almost everything looks soft and grey, and thus old and fusty. Even the news.

There are some nice touches, like the station

??????????????idents, which are simple and clean and a refreshing change from the hyperventilating bombast of the American channels. And of course any channel showing both Black Adder and Monty Python can't be all bad.

Over the past month or so, things have improved, or at least become less strange. We still get endless consecutive episodes of Ground Force every morning, but not so much Red Dwarf. And Jools Holland is on occasionally. And of course there is the BBC World News, containing two concepts - world and news - that individually baffle most Americans.

But what shows no signs of getting any better are the commercials. Not the fact that they exist - I accept that this is America, and here we have commercials. No, what bothers me about the commercials on BBC America is how truly awful they are.

All the hapless BBC sales executives seem to have been able to book for their little channel is an endless succession of shouting morons peddling snake oil for only $19.95. Some notable examples include a man telling me how white my shirts can be, in this case by pouring his wonder powder into a vat of blue liquid. Knock me down, it goes clear!

Then there is a two-CD set of Christian rock tunes. I was not aware that there were two CDs worth of Christian rock ever recorded, so perhaps this is a historical document.

My personal favourite? A liquid hair remover with which you wipe off the hair like sawdust. A man sponges off his chest hair, on camera. It's a new low.

These ads can't possibly bring in any money worth having. What they do, though, is severely damage the BBC brand name, and the idea of British television being quality television. Or is this the demographic of the BBC America audience? I should probably be insulted, but I haven't got time for that. I'm trying to find the number of the cable company.

Craig Zerouni lives and works in LA, where he is currently directing the development of new software for film special effects