BRITISH television has lost nearly all of its former magic.
In the sixties and the seventies, telly was a major cultural force, talked about with wonder and affection in playgrounds, factories, offices and dole queues across the land.
It went downhill fast in the eighties and nineties, and now we have to suffer puerile idiots having strops on Big Brother, plus X-list celebs on horseback, Y-listers on ice, Z-listers hoofing around in spangly catsuits, and sub-Z-listers trying to get jiggy with it on some paradise island. Pathetic.
Or you can opt for the synthetic, cheeky giddiness of Ant and bloody Dec, as they host yet another low-brow game show filmed on the standard blue-lit flashing set.
Then there are the dreary make-over shows, the cookery bore-a-thons, and the endless Westminster village politics.
I can find nothing good to say about contemporary terrestrial television, except that at least Cilla Black, the Home Counties' gobbiest professional Scouser, isn't on it any more. I take a tiny bit of comfort out of that.
Of course, you can opt for digital / satellite services ... if you have money to burn and can't see anything wrong with programme schedules that comprise 98 per cent American shows or repeats.
Things have got so bad that I can no longer accept the validity of the term "TV star" in this country. Surely "star" is the wrong word for all the contracted mediocrities that make up the less than dazzling firmament of "talent" in the British TV industry.
All those tediously familiar actors, the hundreds of thick presenters, plus camp jackasses such as Graham Norton, and the lefty, gay sexuality-obsessed 'writers' such as Russell T Davies ... they all leave me cold.
So many people are paid huge wedges to churn out derivative telly crap for the increasingly ill-educated British public.
A good many telly-watching Brits (picture them stuffing pizza into their pie-holes, spilling cheese and tomato bits down their tracky tops) are now every bit as gormless as their American cousins. They almost deserve the bilge pumped at them 24/7.
For many Brits, intellectual and spiritual salvation is already a lost cause. Those with a modicum of brain / motor function left should make the supreme effort to haul their fat arses off their greasy sofas and turn the telly OFF.
Then get hold of a novel - I recommend Michel Houllebecq's 'Atomised' or 'The Possibility of an Island' - and read it. Claw back some human dignity before it is too late.
Now, that's what I call a TV review.
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alberre wrote...
Agree with you Mr Regan, but please "gan canny" on my fellow Geordies (yes I know they really are f**kwits and overpaid) but let's not tell the world.
Telly was better in the 70s. Just enjoyed watching the box set of Rising Damp when I was last away. It was fantastic... no PC in them days.
When's "Hel'ls Waiting Room" going to hit the small screen?
Regards.
Posted by: alberre | July 17, 2006 12:16 PM