WAITING for the new season of a show you love is delicious torture.

Nine months or so between tastes leaves you ravenous for another bite.

Which is why it’s so especially sour when the new season of that show, well, leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Writing the sentence I am about to write is going to hurt. It’s going to feel traitorous to a show that I have loved since the first episode, but I feel I have no choice …. (deep breath) … American Horror Story: Hotel is crap.

The revolutionary thing about this show is that while most of the cast remains the same throughout, each season the storylines and characters are completely different.

The brilliant Sarah Paulson, for example, has played a medium (as in clairvoyant, not a T-shirt size), a journalist wrongly admitted to a criminal asylum, a coven mother and siamese twins (she was robbed at the Emmys this year — robbed! She played a two-headed girl, for goodness sake!)

I have adored and devoured all four preceding seasons of American Horror Story: House, Asylum, Coven and Freakshow because they’ve all been glorious.

Graphically violent and sadistically barbaric yes (no surprise there, the clue’s in the title on that front), but still the performances, storylines, styling and special effects of each season ultimately shone and fascinated beyond all of that mandatory gore.

Camera Icon Lady Gaga as The Countess and Kathy Bates as Iris in American Horror: Hotel. Credit: Supplied, Prashant Gupta/FX

Perhaps it’s because Jessica Lange is not on board this season that the show has lost some of it’s shine.

Perhaps it’s because this season the theme is vampires …. erggh — pardon the pun, but surely that angle’s been done to death?

Perhaps it’s because this season stars Lady Gaga. Her character, The Duchess, is an immortal vampire queen who swans about in fabulous gowns, dripping in jewels with flawless makeup doing lots of raunchy sex scenes.

Camera Icon Sarah Paulson in American Horror Story: Hotel. Credit: Supplied, Suzanne Tenner/FX

It’s not much of a stretch, is it? If Gaga wanted to prove her dramatic acting chops, I would have been more impressed if she’d put on a pair of Kmart jeans, had greasy hair and did a spot of crochet. No-one’s seen that her do THAT before.

Remember her song Poker Face? I’d like to.

And just like someone desperately trying to save a doomed relationship, I’ve tried to make it work.

I’ve let slow weeks sneak by, I’ve tried to feign interest, I’ve tried to be polite and look at my phone only in the breaks.

Camera Icon Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars in American Horror Story: Freakshow. Credit: Channel 10, Frank Ockenfels/FX

But on Monday I was so bored I hoped a telemarketer would call to break the bloody monotony (in the literal and profane sense).

It’s time I seriously asked myself where this relationship is headed.

But I’ll have to keep watching. Just like I can’t put down a book once I’ve started, and I have to listen to an album in it’s entirety the first time I play it — because I have to know how it ends.

At least American Horror Story next season will be completely new. With a bit of luck Jessica Lange will be back. Kmart jeans optional.