This week's TV Guide provides a wealth of information, and a source of amusement mixed with annoyance. The listings in my Daily Mail 'Weekend' Supplement (strangely named, considering it has the week's viewing on all channels) show that tonight I could, if I wanted to, watch Winterwatch. This programme (on at 9pm, so it started a few minutes ago then) will not be watched on any TV in this household. The comments in the TV Guide 'Pick of the Day' section are pathetic, with the first sentence being less of a revelation than the writer obviously thought when constructing the opening words.
Winterwatch
9pm BBC2
Bridging the gap between Autumnwatch and Springwatch, blah blah blah fucking blah . . . .
How dire. The alternative [please note, American readers, that it is not alternate] on BBC1 is Masterchef. Greg and John are challenging the contestants to "rustle up an exquisite three-course meal for some of the bigwigs of the British legal system." Now, there are a few issues with this. First, there is far too much cooking on TV. Second, I would have thought that exquisite meals are not often rustled up. Maybe an omelette is something capable of being rustled up, but not anything classified as exquisite, I contest. Third, Britain has such a pathetically shit legal system that anyone purporting to be a 'bigwig' ought to be poisoned.
I see on Channel 5 at 7pm, a programme for which there's a fantastically interesting sentence by way of a description. I quote:
Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood help a single mother from Camberley whose dreams of a career change were left in tatters following a botched conversion.
This all sounds quite entertaining, what with a botched conversion, and I wondered what switch of religion the Camberley female had undergone. Turns out the programme is called "Cowboy Builders" - shame, and a letdown.
10.55 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Benson receives an alarming call from an abducted girl. I am struggling with this news, and doubt I will be watching later. First, I suspect that any call from someone who has been abducted could be in the 'alarming' category. However, closer inspection of this sentence reveals a level of confusion on my part. It says the call is alarming, not that the person making the call is alarmed. That means the abducted girl is relaying information in a call that causes alarm for the receiver of the call. I think it would perhaps be alarming if the abducted girl was not alarmed at her predicament, and proceeded to give any news or information, whether itself alarming in its nature or just rather mundane. So, we don't know anything actually regarding the state of the abducted girl, other than she makes a call which Benson answers, and the call is 'alarming' - but in what way is not clear. I am somewhat intrigued now, and might just tune in for the first few minutes, to see whether there's some clarity revealed to me on the alarm aspect of the call.
Monday night's viewing included a programme on Channel 4 called My Social Network Stalker. It was not clear whether this was about a network stalker who was quite social, or a stalker who confined his efforts to doing so on a social network. What was very clear, though, was the suspense that was trying to be generated both in the Pick of the Day section of the TV Guide, and via the numerous trailers on TV ahead of the screening. In all areas, the identity of the woman's stalker was supposed to be shocking. In all the trailers, we were left with the line, "but the one doing it was the last person she would have suspected". The Guide piece reads: "In this shocking True Stories documentary, she talks of her horror at finally discovering the culprit's identity - the last person she would have suspected." What a shame then (or a faux fucking pas) that the other line elsewhere on the page, in the Channel 4 column says: "A woman is subjected to online abuse by her boyfriend." Rather takes the surprise out of it, eh?
Excellent news arrived last Monday, via the TV Guide, with the note next to Cornwall with Caroline Quentin that it was the last in the series. Hooray; bloody woman ought to investigate a tin mine while I close off the access/exit tunnel [fucking great rock and some concrete should do the trick].
Tuesday revealed two things worthy of comment. Hey, I have just thought to myself that I sound rather like Michael Portillo, quoting from his Bradshaw's Guide. Anyway, back to Tuesday, and River Monsters. Talk about manufactured (non-existent) suspense, drama and shite TV. Jeremy Wade decides to go on an expensive journey and annoy the fuck out of some hard-to-find dangerous fish, in the Amazon. The programme is narrated by him, and it's like he's reading out entries in the shittiest diary ever written, with his exploits in catching a fish - one that we don't give a cuntin' fuck about him finding. I felt sorry for the fish. It lives in the fucking tributaries of the Amazon, in Suriname, away from humans because we fuck up its habitat. It's got sharp teeth and manages quite well, enjoying being left alone. However, Jeremy wants to catch one and after a painful hour of crap TV, he does so. Twat! Arghhhhhh!!! He is the river monster!
Later, on BBC1, there was an entry for a programme that I didn't watch, as it didn't really need watching after the TV Guide input.
10.35 Death Unexplained
Investigating the death of a man hit by an underground train.
Now, apologies for being thick, but something's not adding up here - it's not unexplained, if he was hit by a train . . . .
Thanks for watching/listening/reading - happy viewing, whatever you select.
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