- by Owen Morton
Those who read this website on a regular basis will know that most of my work which is up here is based on something I have seen on television. In this month’s articles, for example, so far we’ve had the Enterprise episode review, the blue mairpus article, the thing about Man-E-Faces of He-Man fame, and the magic painting book. Okay, so that’s half and half television-inspired, less than I’d expected, but the point remains that a lot of the articles have something to do with television.
And the odd thing is that I don’t watch an awful lot of television. In fact, I rarely watch anything at all, other than Buffy (of course), He-Man (very occasionally, on account of only having one video of it), the odd Star Trek episode (but not Voyager) and random things which seem interesting (I’m much looking forward to Room 101 with Alexei Sayle tonight, for example). However, living in a house with three other students, not all of whom are as, well, intellectually minded as my good self, I am subjected to various television programmes that take the word ‘dull’ to a whole new level of meaning. Most specifically, I refer to BBC1’s weekday morning schedule:
11.00. Garden Invaders in which people so desperate to get on TV they’ll do anything agree to let a collection of deeply odd TV presenters play merry hell with their garden and rearrange it.
11.30. House Invaders which is pretty much the same thing, except with houses and not gardens, as you might have guessed. It’s one thing to do this with your garden – especially if you’re being paid vast sums to appear on the programme (which you’re almost certainly not) – but come what may, I would never let a TV presenter redecorate my house. I would be more inclined to let, oh, I don’t know, a decorator, do it.
12.00. Bargain Hunt in which a stupid man with even stupider glasses gets two teams of people, gives them two hundred quid to spend at antique fairs, and they then sell what they bought at an auction. Any profit they make they can keep. The usual winnings is something like £2.50, which is a sad testament to the ingenuity of the people who appear on this programme. Surely, by this point, someone would have figured out that the best way to make a profit on this programme is to do a runner with the initial two hundred quid.
12.30. Judgemental which is a quiz programme presented by someone or other. I’d explain the rules, but I honestly couldn’t bear it.
You see what I mean? It’s mind numbing, isn’t it? Doctors don’t need to spend money on buying expensive anaesthetics, when daytime TV would do the job much more efficiently. I honestly cannot see the appeal in watching these programmes, yet at least two of my housemates (I won’t name and shame them, unless they really manage to piss me off between this point and the point when I finish writing the article) are glued to the TV for the two hours these programmes are aired. Okay, argues one of them, people with nothing better to do watch them, don’t they? Yes, all right, I reply. Maybe they do. But you do have something better to do, don’t you? To which this particular individual generally mumbles something incomprehensible and returns his attention to the delights of whichever programme is currently on. Unless it’s Bargain Hunt, in which case he’ll make a spirited defence of it, usually supported by the other of my housemates who watches it, generally involving the phrase “he’s a quality guy” from one or both of them.
But I don’t go in for television in a big way, as we all know. Most of my articles actually revolve around things which were aired many years ago, classic childrens’ programmes which cannot now be equalled. Buffy, of course, is a true classic and should go on forever, but most of the rest of things on television are useless. I am therefore opposed to the mindless viewing of any programme which happens to be on, just because people can’t be bothered to go and do something useful with their lives.
And having thought along this line for a while, I then thought about how to make television a much more intelligent medium for reaching peoples’ minds. Firstly, there shall be only one channel. We will remove every other channel, and I think it should be a BBC channel, because there would then be no adverts. So, we’ll have one channel, called something like BBC Heath. Here is its logo:
And secondly – this being the more important part of my plan – there will only be three programmes on BBC Heath. The first shall be one hour a day of news – not a dumbed down version of the news that we seem to be getting more and more lately, but an actual intelligent programme which informs us what’s going on, and tells us straight as well, with no fascistic censorship on what’s said. The second programme shall of course be Buffy, just one episode a day, to be aired directly after the news. These two programmes will make up prime-time viewing. The rest of the day will be taken up with specially prepared feature length episodes of Mopatop’s Shop, which I have never seen but I think it sounds asinine enough to encourage people to get up and do something useful instead.
And at the end of this deeply stupid rant, I will conclude by saying, “I don’t mean it,” in a desperate attempt to avoid being lynched by anyone who disagrees with what I’ve said here (i.e. pretty much everyone).