In the living room of life, I’ve only really been keeping half an eye on the television in recent months. The second I caught the whiff of bullshit surrounding the Iraq conflict I was sickened, and stopped watching the news. Google News keeps me up to date, in quiet moments and at lunchtimes.
I found the remote to the telly in the living room of life, (it was down in between the hypothetical sofa cushions) and coming back to it, some of it doesn’t make sense. Above and beyond the plague of reality TV shows, repeats of reality TV shows and Reality TV Gold, things are awry.
I remember doing a radio show early on a Saturday morning (Stupid slot. Very stupid slot...) in 1999, and starting the show after the final story on the news service feed, all about the winner of a programme called ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ in America. There was an audio clip. The guy, with style that has yet to be bettered on this side of the Atlantic, used his ‘Phone a Friend’ lifeline to call his Dad and let him know that he was about to become a millionaire because he already knew the answer.
One of the funniest things that came about from the unexpectedly free cable TV in our old flat was that we occasionally got random channels that came and went. Let me tell you, the Indian version of ‘Millionaire’ is hilarious. Especially as the presenter kept lapsing in and out of English, and was a graduate of the Chris Tarrant School of Body Language and Facial Expressions (That would be CTSBLFE. As an acronym, it needs a little work, Chris). It was uncanny.
“Hulooonoo jabba hutt hut hut rupees? But we don’t want to give you that. Oh no. Hurriup!”
Funny and scary at the same time.
Ask the audience...isn’t the audience full of the family members of other would-be contestants, itching to be given their shot at the prize? I wouldn’t trust them with a difficult question! They might deliberately mislead me! I see the way they look at me. They want the money. Well they can’t have it! It’s mine! Mine I tell you!
Ah yes. Being hypothetical.
Instead of making a living out of selecting aspiring singers and entertainers that they feel the public might like, record companies nowadays are taking the risk out of the equation and getting the public to pay to elect it’s own stars, for whose music they will then pay again.
It is ingenious, I’d be the first to applaud a good idea, but I’m missing Saturday night television.
Can I have it back, please?
I’ve written about ‘fly on the wall’ reality TV before. I can’t watch it. Other people’s difficulties are not entertaining, but actively frustrating to me. Cut that out of the schedule.
Celebrity ‘reality’ TV. (A quick note...how can this be reality TV? If there were ever a bunch of people who were acting, it’s any given group of celebrities in front of a camera) Inane. Huggy. Crap. As stimulating as watching decomposing earwigs, an activity to which it is not all that dissimilar. Cut that out of the schedule.
I’m not a big soaps man. Eastenders and Coronation Street? Life crises and the crackle of chip fat as the bullets fly? No thanks. Gritty drama it may be, but when it’s involving, it’s unpleasant, and when it isn’t involving, it isn’t involving. Cut all of them out of the schedule. Apart from maybe the Sunday morning Hollyoaks omnibus.
All of this and the news gone, and I’m left with Teachers on a Wednesday night, Scrubs on a Friday, and programmes that everyone says are great that I always seem to miss, like 24 (I have never seen a single episode) and Six Feet Under (Saw 1 episode. There was a sex party. Confusion strikes.)
If religion, in its past role as something to keep people in their lives without complaining, keeping them down, keeping them quiet, keeping them paying their taxes, keeping them happy that somewhere, sometime, after this life, things will be better, has declined, then I expect someone somewhere was very happy that television was around to pick up the mantle.
But I don’t watch it that much any more.
Does anyone have any opiate?
Come on...there was masses of it around a while ago...
Discuss.
Leave a comment