After months of waiting, season 4 of Lost hits the screens today.

It seems like ages since season 3 came to an end. Not having Sky telly, I get my episodes from Justin in Aberdeen who records them thanks to Sky+ and sends them to me every couple of weeks when its on.

A few months back, Justin was unable to send me episodes for a few weeks, and so I ended up coming home from work one day – I was still in Glasgow at the time – to find the final seven or eight episodes of season 3 together in the post.

I sat down in front of my laptop without even taking my jacket off, and watched them all, back to back. I took only what food and toilet breaks I had to, and finished some time after midnight. It was a phenomenal cliffhanger and I was left stunned, jaw dropped, by what unfolded.

For anyone who’s not really watched Lost, the story is most simply about the multinational band survivors of a plane crash on a remote Pacific island. The more the survivors attempt to understand their new surroundings, the more they discover the sinister secrets that lie beneath its surface.

Brilliantly acted and written, Lost combines elements of drama, mystery, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure – but it is none of those alone. Above all, it’s about people, their interactions, personalities and relationships – each episode is character-centred, and peppered with “flashbacks” as we get to know the survivors and their lives before the crash.

It’s quite simply got everything you could want from a TV show, and while it can be accused of dragging out the suspense of the various mysteries a little too teasingly, there are only going to be another three seasons: so the answers to the big questions of the show will have to start coming sooner rather than later.

Sad though it may seem, I’ve been anticipating the return of Lost so much in recent weeks, I’ve even had one or two Lost-related dreams. So of course I can’t wait for the middle of the week, by which time the first episode should have arrived in the post from Justin.

Oh, and talking of Justin, take a look at an outstanding photo he took this weekend. I like it for the dark, brooding atmosphere, the kind of photographability Aberdeen has that I wrote about in my previous post. And I don’t just like it because that’s me in the photo – somewhat ominously approaching a sign saying “30”…