I have to say that not so long ago I wouldn’t have bothered with last nights Storyville on BBC4. But since Frank surreptitiously plunged me into the world of the online journal presented in a chronological order, Blog Wars now held a certain interest for me.

The show looked at the impact blogging has had on politics stateside eventually focusing it’s attentions on the Conneticut Democratic Primaries where, bolstered by huge left-wing blogger support, unknown Ned Lamont took on incumbent and Democratic Party stalwart Joe Lieberman. Besides being an almost text-book example of how to make a simple but effective documentary, it also produced some of the most unwittingly funny moments on tv. For instance on the day of the elections one blogger described it as feeling like they were “amassing at the gates of Mordor” (and something about attacking the Death Star too). There was also the Lamont aide, after they’d won, telling them all that blogging was, struggling to find the right phrase, the thing.

In the end though, Blog Wars is unlikely to change anyone’s opinion of blogging or bloggers as very few of them managed to come across as anything other than smug geeks. The bitter irony came later, after the cameras stopped rolling, when Lieberman ran as an independent and beat Lamont in the senate elections - where, after all is said and done, it really matters. Still, Blog Wars did demonstrate the speed at which their influence is growing and how stupid it’d be to start writing them off.