Daysleeper

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t watch much TV. I think I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t like any of it. US TV definitely has its moments; Family Guy, The Daily Show, Heroes, and anything on the Mexican channels are works of genius.

I think, at least according to our cable people, that we have around 130 channels – it might be slightly more or less it doesn’t really matter. As anyone with Freeview will know, the more channels you get, the more choice you get. And choice is always a good thing driving standards ever upwards. Particularly daytime TV. For example, of a weekday afternoon I can sit down to enjoy any one of these:

Judge Judy
Judge Jo Brown
Judge Mills Lane
Judge Hatchett
Judge Mathis
The People’s Court
Divorce Court
Moral Court
Texas Justice (a personal favourite)

Of course it is possible that come 3pm whilst you settle down to high tea and thirty minutes with the gogglebox you mightn’t want to indulge in watching deserately poor uneducated people suing each other for a snowblower and arguing that little Cletus Jr (CJ) “don’t be needing no books, no books what done got me where I be”. For those people – and I don’t count myself in that group as paternity tests are always compelling viewing – there’s your stories. Soap operas with so much drama it makes Coronation Street seem like a dull road in a dull part of England with a cast of fuglies. Ah.. oh. Anyway, here, I can select from some of the following as I pass another gin soaked afternoon of housework:

The Young and The Restless
The Bold and The Beautiful
All My Children
Passions
General Hospital
One Life To Live
As The World Turns
Guiding Light
Days Of Our Lives

That’s just the main three network’s daytime offerings. They are all on for about an hour every day, and in that hour they will pack in something like one or two scenes, which helps them keep the story from progressing and enables nothing to take an extraordinary amount of time. For example there is a man in Days Of Our Lives who is wrapped in bandages, can’t speak and can’t move. As far as I can tell from Google, he’s an unknown character who’s been that way in the show for at least two years. So thats a actor who has lots of onscreen time over the past couple of years, but turns up to work every day to have his entire body covered, has said not one word and moved nothing but his eyes. They also have soundtracks (imagine Eastenders with a soundtrack), mostly performed by someone with a ‘Fill In’ button on their Casio Keyboard. Not only that but flashbacks, dream sequences, and angrily-staring-at-the-telephone-after-using-it style of acting are all prominent features. It is compulsive stuff.

Unfortunately the drama is too often punctuated by adverts (or, as they call them here – commericals – those crazy yanks), and whilst Carol Vorderman continually rubbing my bad debt and high cholesterol in my face is like having your eyes sandpapered, they get worse over here. There’s the adverts for drugs, which I’ll post a bunch of examples of sometime (including one where a bloke picks and eats peas from his mash potato in order to demonstrate prostate disease), 1970’s style adverts for Local things (again, more later) but nine out of 10 adverts are for cars. On and on and on and on with bloody car adverts, there’s nothing I couldn’t tell you about which trucks will bring 10,000lbs to a dead stop quickest, or which mid-range hatchback SUV does 28mpg on the highway etc. However, like any mountain of shit, there’s always the odd bit of sweetcorn and US advertising is saved by these fine messages..

The diarrhea song – we’re all singing it.
Little Richard, and mashed potatoes
Or look here on youtube for anything with the Geico Gecko in it, a sort of cockenehey lizard, which is the first thing you’d use to sell insurance..