It is included in the formal contract of every writer here that they must watch Fleabag and discuss how much they love both it and Phoebe Waller-Bridge on a regular basis, otherwise we are denied our annual bonus of discount Birkenstocks.

Happily, Fleabag is returning for a second season on 4 March, which at least gives us something to go on.

The comedy wrapped its story up so neatly in its first season, back in 2016, that some trepidation about its return is only natural.

However, the new series trailer, released last week, suggests that such feelings may be misguided: there is lusting after a priest; eye-wateringly candid counselling; and the promise of a hot misogynist. Fleabag is back, baby!

This time, though, it will air on BBC One, rather than online-only on BBC Three as it did in its initial incarnation, and it will be shown in weekly instalments. Actually, it was released weekly in 2016, too, but these days it feels almost quaint to make people wait seven days to see what’s going to happen next.

Killing Eve, which similarly harnessed Waller-Bridge’s brilliance as writer and showrunner, was on television on Saturdays, but was also left online in one big juicy boxset on which one could gorge oneself instantly, should the appetite demand it.

It is becoming more and more common for shows to be released all at once. Pure, Channel 4’s very good comedy drama, is still on, but I finished it in a week, because all six episodes were put online on the day it debuted. The series is not dissimilar to Fleabag, at least tonally, and its episodes are short, which made it a manageable binge. But once I had finished, I started to feel a slight sense that I had overdone it, that perhaps it would have revealed its charms more plainly had it been meted out by the week. Besides, I was sad that it was over so quickly. I see it in the television listings now and think, wistfully, about what could have been.

There is so much good television that it is simply impossible to get through even a snippet of it, which means that delayed gratification is starting to become more and more appealing. The frenzy over Bodyguard last summer, in which we all – horror of horrors – seemed to watch the same programme on the same screen at the same time, so that we could talk about it together, showed that a reprieve from the “just-one-more” pressure of boxsets is certainly welcome, and perhaps overdue. Much like the second season of Fleabag.

Nintendo boss is not the villain

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Doug Bowser with Mario. Photograph: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Nintendo of America

As winter comes to an end and spring pokes its sunny head above the clouds, and green shoots begin to appear once again, and life seems just that little bit less grey, along comes a news story that distracts from all the chaos with simple, flippant and silly joy.

Nintendo has announced that the successor to its outgoing US president and chief operating officer, Reggie Fils-Aime, will be its senior vice-president of sales and marketing, Doug Bowser. “And I ask you, with a name like Bowser, who better to hold the keys to the Nintendo castle?” said Fils-Aime, in a farewell message to fans.

“Literally anyone not named after one of Nintendo’s most famous baddies!” replied the collective voice of the internet, which was then drowned out by the collective voice of headline writers everywhere, who had a ball with “Bowser takes over”.

This all happened once before, when Bowser – the man Bowser, not the spiky-shelled villain Bowser – arrived as VP of sales in 2015. He thanked fans by posing for a picture in front of stuffed Nintendo toys, including Mario and Luigi, who had been slyly tied up in the background. Nominative determinism is rarely as fun as this.

Raise a glass to the battling pub landlady

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pauline Forster at the George Tavern: ‘a victory for music venues’. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Reading the words “property developers” in a news story has a similar effect on me as seeing the name of a long-forgotten celebrity you once loved: you steel yourself, take a deep breath and think, what have they done now?

Whether it’s turfing out social housing tenants or segregating affordable housing residents, developers have been a ghoulish spectre in modern cities, driving up rent and property prices even while poverty and homelessness spread on their own doorstep.

One of the many gruesome effects of gentrification is that it often suffocates what attracted people to an area in the first place. They buy flats built next a famous music venue, for example, discover famous music venues can be noisy, complain, then the venue is closed down.

Three cheers, then, for Pauline Forster, who has been the landlady of the celebrated George Tavern in Stepney, east London, since she bought it in the early 2000s. Last week Forster had a rare “deed of easement” proposal accepted by Tower Hamlets council, which will safeguard the pub from future noise complaints. A Save the George campaign has been running since 2008, when a proposed development led to worries it would lose its status as a music venue.

“The George Tavern has been officially saved,” read a post on Facebook. It is only the second time that a deed of easement has been used; the first was for the Ministry of Sound nightclub in 2013. “It’s a real victory, not just for the George,” Forster told the East London Advertiser, “but for [all] pubs and music venues” threatened by development.

• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist