TV: Problems

Hello everyone, happy March!

Ok, got home today and, with my two housemates away, I put on a vest, ate ice-cream and flicked through the channels. There was nothing interesting on the main channels and all of the extra channels seemed to be dedicated to repeats of 'How I Met Your Mother.' HIMYM, as I like to call it, is a cheap, massively overrated, worryingly unfunny Friends rip-off. It shouldn't be on all the time. It must cost these channels a lot of money to get the rights to show it on TV. I think they should be using that money to import better shows, or at least produce better shows of their own. The same applies in principle for SCRUBS, a show which I loathe, and which I use as a quick social guide: if you like Scrubs, chances are I won't like you.

However, the only shows British TV seems to make now are scripted reality shows. Because they are cheap to make, and unfathomably popular, we are subjected to I.Q. napalming shows such as Geordie Shore, The Only Way Is Essex, and that bastion of awfully-named shows, Desperate Scousewives. There are also a worrying amount of shows about Street Dancing, which also acts as another social guide for me: if you think that Street Dancing is anything but baffling, then chances are you're a moron. Anyway, scripted reality shows,  are like reality shows, but follow scripted settings and characters. I don't get why anyone enjoys them. While my own TV ideas were just a joke, I'm sure if I put them forward in a room full of executives, they wouldn't be instantly dismissed.  

I like the The Big Bang Theory, it's funny, though it's not terrific, and it probably shouldn't be on twice a day when less than 100 episodes have been made. British TV never showed Arrested Development when it was first out, Curb your Enthusiasm is only ever on late at night, and it's never really taken to Seinfeld. Nowhere on British TV can you watch terrific shows like Parks and Recreation or Louie. I know a few people who resorted to streaming Community because when it was shown it was moved around timeslots and showed the episodes out of order. Just out of interest, Community is funny, but not as funny as it thinks it is, and it suffers from having few sympathetic characters, but I can see why people love it the way they do. It may only be a cult show, but people will watch it if it is treated with respect by showing it in order at the same time every week.

Instead we get old game shows (Pointless is just that, and the looks like it was filmed in the 1970s, despite being contemporary). We get HIMYM, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Although there are an endless stream of old episodes of Frasier and the Simpsons, often all the juicy jokes have been removed to prevent offence. Seriously, I watched an episode of Frasier once where Niles accidentally goes out with a prostitute but doesn't realise it, and they removed any mention of it, so if you hadn't seen the episode before, you wouldn't realise what the problem was. It meant that the show was half the length it should have been. Either treat the show with respect and show it in full, or don't show it at all. Is it any surprise that DVD sales are up on TV shows? Is it any surprise that downloading and streaming shows is also up?

Anyway, despite this, British television is a million times better than Australian TV, which often reminded me of the TV you get when on holiday in Third World Countries. Just saying.