We get 21 television stations here in the hotel/apartment, 10 of them in English.

Setting aside the news stations, the English-language stations are the usual collection of ancient reruns, third-tier movies, amateurish Canadian prime-time fare and the random reality show out of Australia. Stuff so bad we can go days without even turning on the set.

It was much the same in Hong Kong, a year ago. Though Leah claims we’re better off here because we have a movie channel. Hmm. I didn’t notice.

But there is one truly odd facet of local cable/English TV, and fairly fascinating one.

The mini-sode.

What is a mini-sode?

Never had heard of it myself. Till a month ago.

A mini-sode is … an old American sitcom … condensed into about four minutes.

Mini-sodes have value here (and perhaps in other places without real advertising on TV) … because they fill in the extra minutes in the hour that North American,  ad-based prime-time shows don’t account for, once the commercials are stripped out. As they are here. (The U.S. half-hour show is actually only 22 minutes, and the hour show is actually 45 minutes, or whatever.)

Thus, the mini-sode. To fill in the hour.

So far, we recall seeing mini-sodes of … “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Married … With Children” and the truly ancient “Bewitched.”

So, you get a truncated version of those half-hour not-so-golden oldies … and the really strange part of it is … they work. At least as well as the original episodes, and probably better because you’re saving 15-plus minutes of your life.

In every mini-sode, Elizabeth Montgomery is going to cast a spell, and Al Bundy is going to do something stupid … and Gary Coleman will certainly bark, “What you talkin’ ’bout Willis?” before some hoary moral is explained to us by the old guy in the sweater.

The lesson here? We knew that we weren’t getting 30 minutes of TV,  back in the States.

But we now recognize that perhaps only the greatest of half-hour shows ever made (Cheers,  Seinfeld, et al)  are worth more than four minutes. The basic episode of any other show … it can be condensed into four minutes, and we don’t notice any harm whatsoever.

Maybe we can somehow record one of these, and take it home, and show it around. And let everyone see what we mean.

Four minutes of Gary Coleman or Al Bundy … is plenty.

Mini-sodes … bring ’em on.