Come Dine With Me

What you mean to say that the "Go Compare" and "Compare the Meerkat" adverts aren't worth watching an endless stream of people who can't sing or dance?

 

I found a far easier way of getting a 'reality' fix. I go to the pub.

 

Just making an observation on the whole really, I find about 99% of television to be bile. At risk of sounding like a pretentious **** I think it is a wasteland that could and should be filled with interesting things of educational worth. Commercial channels I can understand would squabble for the highest possible ratings with nonsense, but the BBC, fueled by the people, should be ashamed.

 

Completely agree with this. Television in the UK is television for children, kids stuff.

 

There's a reasonalbe amount of quality television. BBC 4 is usually good, as are a smattering of shows from the other channels. There's probably something quite good to watch virtually every evening. The trouble is that it is easilly lost in the huge mass of bilge

 

I've heard BBC4 is supposed to have some good documentaries, but I've also heard it is high on the target list for scrapping due to budget cuts.

It's a downward slope on which television society has found itself nearing the bottom; people just aren't interested in learning something useful or bettering themselves intellectually when they can turn over and make themselves feel good by having a laugh or a gape at somebody fatter or thinner, more intelligent or stupid, more boring or strange etc. Sadly even long running series like Horizon have ended up pandering to these idiots to gain as much attention as possible; regular episodes on interesting science are finding themselves increasingly replaced by others such as: "Do I Drink Too Much?", "What Makes a Genius?", "What's the Problem with Nudity?". And are there even any music or literature television shows that relate to these arts outside the popular charts/best sellers lists? Maybe the odd documentary on BBC4 every year about Mozart but who the hell wants to see his life story for the billionth time?

This is turning into quite the rant.

 

I find there are 3 or 4 templates for a show, and that is all that gets put out all day every day. Antiques, cooking, reality and property shows are the main culprits, none of which interest me and seem to make up 60% of what's on. Then there's a barage of soaps which are just dross, some dramas which vary in quality and then chat shows, some of which need to be scrapped, the alan titchmarsh show and loose women being prime examples. What I'm left with are the occasional documentary (Frozen Planet is coming up soon), sport for about 2 hours a week (All england matches should be televised on terrestrial tv, and SOME premier league matches). On a saturday morning you have the choice of cooking on BBC 1, cooking on ITV and property/dross on 2 and 4. If I lived alone I wouldn't pay a licence fee and I would simply watch any good stuff on catch up. Quite clearly TV is of poor quality unless you pay out lots of money for virgin or sky and even then in my experience it's just crap spread over more channels.