Category: TV

I own a TV

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Mesmerize, originally uploaded by *Berto.

I love TV. Love it, love it, love it! Anyone who knows me thinks I watch way too much and maybe they are right. If I may quote Homer Simpson, “Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover”, I feel that sums it up nicely (particularly the teacher part). However I seem to find myself running into people in my daily life who don’t watch TV and don’t own a TV. Unsurprisingly they can be extremely boring but they also keep working the fact into conversation. I bring it up because my life is perilously close to a Onion article from all the way back in 2000:

Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn’t Own A Television

Which reports on Area resident Jonathan Green who does not own a television, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers. While the article is meant to be satire, I find myself living the reality.

Some TV may be dross, I work a regular 9-5 job so I miss the insipid daytime programming of morning shows and soap operas. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the reality TV boom that crowds out the afternoon programming either. However some of the dramas coming out of the US is amazing and giving the movies a run for their money, Lost and Battlestar Galatica are awesome and every second year of 24. Also you can’t go wrong with some top class documentaries, particularly local history. As an expat it takes along time to catch up with what the locals know and those docos (as they say in Oz) are a life saver.

I have to admit though growing up I used to feel so left out when shows that aired in America took years to be shown in Ireland or the UK. It was only when I lived there for a few years and saw the amount of crap that would start a season and get canceled early I realised that the multi year delay was a necessary and welcome filter to remove all the crap and at least guarantee some quality. Lets hope the WGA strike in the US is over and those dudes can get back to producing some decent shows.

TV = ADD


iPod Video
Originally uploaded by Alexandre Van de Sande

Apparently science has caught up with me. At last there is a study that connects attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in teenagers with watching too much TV as a child. I think this is crap, I watched tonnes of TV as a kid and it never … Oh look a squirrel.. hee hee hee!

Life on Mars meets Camberwick Green

Even though Life on Mars has been around for 2 years I have only recently come across it, it being an English TV show and me living in Australia might have something to do with that. I have to say it is one of the best TV shows I have seen in a long time. A lot of it comes from all the unPC stuff that DCI Gene Hunt gets away. However the show makes interesting and unusual use of TV from the 70s, be it as the Doctors in 2006 communicating through the Open University programs on TV or the Test Card girl leaving her post and stalking time traveler/mental case Sam Tyler as Death personified.
It’s major appeal, I think, is that even when the show is serious it still knows how to be fun. I’m only up to the fifth episode of the second season, but I loved the Camberwick Green knock off. Check out the nonce waving to the camera as he is getting kicked in my Gene Hunt.

Gene Hunt: I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.
Sam Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Gene Hunt: You make that sound like a bad thing.

Update : I have had to relink to another youtube version of the video as the BBC are pursuing the copyright. Don’t be surprised if it also gets suppressed.