As I get older, I find more television programmes unbearable. It’s not entirely the programme makers fault. Instead of an evening’s viewing, there are now 24 hours to fill up, across umpteen channels.
So they have ‘filler’. Currently, it’s ‘Reality TV’. Except nothing on TV is real. It should be called ‘unscripted documentary TV’.
Surely there is no more room for property, ‘make-over’ or romance-based programs. How about this: "Fat Single Woman With Hooligan Kids Renovating Property in Provence".
A quintuple whammy. The kids’ psychotherapist becomes her boyfriend and helps her renovate the house, in an idealised foreign setting, while she drops two dress sizes.
[It’s MY concept! I thought of it first! The rights belong to MMEEEEEeeee!.]
UK soap operas. Have some fun: flick through the five UK terrestrial channels between 6 and 10pm. Score a point if a woman is crying. Score five points if a woman is reproaching a man. Score ten points if he whines pathetically in reply. Score fifteen if she then storms out of the room.
In reality, your average red-blooded British male would say "Aw, piss orf, ya silly cah!" before she’d got two words out, and then head off down the pub.
UK TV dramas are full of misery. As an Irishman, I can’t believe that people enjoy these. I’ve lived in London’s East End. Real Cockneys occasionally smile and crack a joke.
Directors have got a bad habit of using blue filters as well, to ‘heighten’ the miserable mood. It’s terrible crap. Thank God for the programmable video recorder. Record the shows you like, fast forward through the ads and ‘talking about our feelings’ segments.