My TiVo had wishlists where you could search for
Genre, actor, director or keywords e.g "planets" or "universe"
Which would find a list of matching programmes irrespective of which channel.
You could also save them to run again anytime
You could also set them to automatically record any matching programmes from any channel
I haven't got this on my Hummy4000 so I'm wondering whether anyone uses either a mobile app or website to setup tv wishlists that can send notifications when a programme matching my wishlist ("Gene Hackman", "Sherlock") appears in the guide