I'm not convinced, those rescue organisations' dogs that do wonderful stuff at earthquakes have to do six months when they get back.

Well, it's not exactly presented as reality. It's a highly stylized show with a good amount of quirkiness and humor. It blatantly borrows heavily from Guy Ritchie's pre-Madonna work. In fact, the actor playing Eddie looks not entirely unlike Jason Statham.

programme breaks are filled with ersatz commercials promoting other BBC services and programmes

In the US, these are known as promos or house ads. You're the second in this thread to not have a name for them, so I assume they're new enough that folks haven't come up with one on their own yet.

Also (and I don't know if you have these) those tiny ads just before or after the real commercials are done that essentially say ``More Buffy after this!'' are called bumps. And the logo of the station that's omnipresent in the corner of the screen, supposedly but not really noninvasive is called a bug.

Some stations are now advertising for other programs while a real program is on, and they're becoming more invasive than ever. Last night on Keen Eddie, for example, they advertised for a new reality show called Paradise Island (or something like that) and it was an animated logo with the title and some palm trees and when it's going to run that must have taken up nearly a quarter of the screen.

TNN, one of our basic cable channels, soon to be Spike TV, runs a crawl during all of its programming advertising their other programs, and sometimes just displaying useless information. And, even better, in order to not obscure the program, they compress it vertically, making everyone look dumpy, unless they happen to be at an angle, when they end up looking rhomboidal.

I was going to reply fully to your last posting, but I reckoned it was an interesting dialogue between Andy and yourself.

Don't hold back. More voices is better.