Thanks to exclusive deliveries from swish.tv, I’ve now seen the phenomenal first four episodes of Lost season 5. It’s utterly jaw-dropping.

Not just in the normal way that Lost is, but taking the viewer on some even more incredible journeys than before, the plot twisting and turning in on itself in the most mesmerising and compelling way. Some questions are being answered and new ones are being posed, but on the whole we are being revealed more and more about what lies behind the strange island at the heart of the show.

And most excitingly, some of the more recent characters have taken centre-stage and we are seeing less of the traditionally key characters. There’s a mounting body count, and I am less confident in this series that the “core” characters are sacrosanct anymore.

I really can’t think of the right adjectives for Lost – compelling and jaw-dropping doesn’t quite capture the incredible depth and scale of this brilliantly-made drama. With the exception of one or two truly terrible Australian accents by bit-part Americans, it is truly television at its very, very best.

It’s really got under my skin. Season 5 has been a long wait, and I’ve thought about it many times, even having Lost-based dreams on one or two occasions, which is rather obsessive, I must confess. So the new episodes have been a very welcome arrival on my doormat.

To check a couple of facts in my mind from the most recent episodes, I headed to the ridiculously detailed Lostpedia earlier this evening, which was a stupid mistake – I am one episode behind it, and inadvertently discovered something I really didn’t want to at this stage.

It’s almost enough to make me want to get a TV so that I can watch episodes as they are broadcast.

Almost, but not quite.