Raising the quality threshold
Since I plugged my freeview box into my telly I’ve made three astonishing discoveries. One: you are never more that seven seconds from an episode of ‘Friends’ (and even though you remember them being funny, on repeat they strike you as dreadful whenever Joey and Chandler are off-screen). Two: watching the ‘presenters’ on those auction tee-vee channels whoring themselves to flog towels (‘only 7,000 left now, come on you bastards, we’re not going onto the drinks-cabinet-in-the-shape-of-Marie-Antionette-with-gillotine-bottle-opener until we’ve got rid of this lot’) is as compulsive as slowing down to have a good neb at an RTA. Three: Either I am getting some taste in my old age, or television is shit.
Actually, given the number of repeats I’m looking at thinking ‘this is shit’, it appears telly always WAS shit and I just never had anything better to do. Now, TV has to work like a 12 year old in a trainer factory to get my attention, as with a single flick of the finger I can banish some gurning idiot and replace him with Metroid Prime. (Sorry mum, even now when I turn the telly off I’m unlikely to go and run round in the garden getting fresh air until I fall over an vomit from the excitement, exercise and pollen).
Sadly, it’s not just external forces, temptations and pleasures that have me reaching for the ‘off, off, in the name of Beelzebub off!’ switch. Television programming appears to be committing some sort of slow motion suicide. Either that or with so many channels, the pool of talent has thinned out to form a sort of puddle. A puddle comprised of piss and with a thin film of oil on top. Let’s take a completely random example…ITV.
In particular - ‘X Factor’. This does not have me reaching for the ‘off’ button. This has me reaching for my specially adapted Armstrong and Hughes steam-powered liquid bovine excrement high velocity despenseron automatic 5000, so that I can go to whatever dreadful leisure centre it is they record that abomination unto humanity and make a statement by showering everyone involved in steaming shit in the same way it pollutes my world whenever I mistakenly see it. It’s like anti-entertainment, like kryptonite for feeling good about yourself.
Then they follow it up with some sort of extra programme on ITV2. Presented by people not talented enough to be in terrestrial telly speaking to people not talented enough to already have a recording contract or, as they are known, fatties.
ITV loves fatties. Humiliating them anyway. They should just cut the crap and have Saturday night consisting of fat girls being insulted, crying and then pushed into a pit of margarine and given a chainsaw to defend themselves again, oh, I dunno, a bear.
The benefit of the freeview box is the unexpected treat. A quality piece of television you never saw originally and is now as fresh and lovely as the first time it probably caused outrage in the Daily Mail. Usually it’s some piece from the seventies, easily identified by the soft look of the video and the haircuts and lapels of a gentler age, where one could wear sideburns without being openly mocked or feared or a bewildering combination of both. For instance, ‘The Averngers’. Christ! Why is this programme not on all day every day. Never saw the original broadcasts but now they ooze class, style and fun.
Telly is going to have to work a lot, lot harder to retain my affections and the conclusion of my romance with the idiot box will not be marked by anything as soppy as a letter. No, those programme that do not cut the mustard will be taken out and shot, apart from X Factor which, I strongly suspect, will be a stake through the heart job.
Actually, given the number of repeats I’m looking at thinking ‘this is shit’, it appears telly always WAS shit and I just never had anything better to do. Now, TV has to work like a 12 year old in a trainer factory to get my attention, as with a single flick of the finger I can banish some gurning idiot and replace him with Metroid Prime. (Sorry mum, even now when I turn the telly off I’m unlikely to go and run round in the garden getting fresh air until I fall over an vomit from the excitement, exercise and pollen).
Sadly, it’s not just external forces, temptations and pleasures that have me reaching for the ‘off, off, in the name of Beelzebub off!’ switch. Television programming appears to be committing some sort of slow motion suicide. Either that or with so many channels, the pool of talent has thinned out to form a sort of puddle. A puddle comprised of piss and with a thin film of oil on top. Let’s take a completely random example…ITV.
In particular - ‘X Factor’. This does not have me reaching for the ‘off’ button. This has me reaching for my specially adapted Armstrong and Hughes steam-powered liquid bovine excrement high velocity despenseron automatic 5000, so that I can go to whatever dreadful leisure centre it is they record that abomination unto humanity and make a statement by showering everyone involved in steaming shit in the same way it pollutes my world whenever I mistakenly see it. It’s like anti-entertainment, like kryptonite for feeling good about yourself.
Then they follow it up with some sort of extra programme on ITV2. Presented by people not talented enough to be in terrestrial telly speaking to people not talented enough to already have a recording contract or, as they are known, fatties.
ITV loves fatties. Humiliating them anyway. They should just cut the crap and have Saturday night consisting of fat girls being insulted, crying and then pushed into a pit of margarine and given a chainsaw to defend themselves again, oh, I dunno, a bear.
The benefit of the freeview box is the unexpected treat. A quality piece of television you never saw originally and is now as fresh and lovely as the first time it probably caused outrage in the Daily Mail. Usually it’s some piece from the seventies, easily identified by the soft look of the video and the haircuts and lapels of a gentler age, where one could wear sideburns without being openly mocked or feared or a bewildering combination of both. For instance, ‘The Averngers’. Christ! Why is this programme not on all day every day. Never saw the original broadcasts but now they ooze class, style and fun.
Telly is going to have to work a lot, lot harder to retain my affections and the conclusion of my romance with the idiot box will not be marked by anything as soppy as a letter. No, those programme that do not cut the mustard will be taken out and shot, apart from X Factor which, I strongly suspect, will be a stake through the heart job.
1 Comments:
I must admit, that I, too, have been extremely disappointed with the recent purchase of about 800 channels. I usually just watch the news anyway which is problematic in itself. There are two good things in the purchase of the cable TV box: OnDemand where you get to see certain TV shows and many movies whenever you want, seemingly for free. Next is HBO---the movies they've been playing lately suck except for the one instance when I had dozed off to wakeup to soft porn at 3am...like a horrible accident with mangled cars and body parts strewn across the highway, I just couldn't look away.
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