Weekly Rant - The End of Television

TV has just run out of ideas. As from Thursday 7th March, you'll be able to watch this on Channel 4:

Every night over 20 million of us enjoy an evening in front of the telly, but imagine if the TV looked back at you - what would it see? Channel 4 goes into the living rooms across Britain to get the nation’s real reactions to the week’s biggest and best TV shows.

So just to be clear - you sit down to watch TV. And what you see, on the TV, is a bunch of people. Watching TV. Presumily* TV that's a hell of a lot more interesting than the rubbish you're watching. And this is entertainment?!

Now, you would think the "biggest and best TV shows" would include the likes of Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men, The Walking Dead et al. But alas, we all know they actually mean something along the lines of Made in Essex and Jeremy Kyle's Big Fat Gypsy Pissup.

Below is an actual transcript from an actual meeting that actually happened:

Past-His-Best Exec: We need a new show. And quick!
Young Fledgling: I have brought this writer with me. He has ideas in his head!
Deadbeat Writer: Does anyone have any food?
Exec: What is your fee, young writer on whom I look at in a downwards direction?
Writer: 50p per hour. And a cookie. Please?
Exec: Fifty pennies? Cookies?! Extortion! Be gone from my sight!
Writer: *slumps away to die in the corner. Quietly.*
Exec: Fledgling, more ideas!
Fledgling: I have.....one idea. But it needs work.
Exec: *swings back in his overly-sized leather chair*
Fledgling: We point the camera at people. While they do something interesting.
Exec: But what? What interests the TV-watchers at home?
Fledgling: Television?
Exec: YES! Television is the key, it's perfect!
Fledgling: And it will cost us nothing! We just need some cameras.
Exec: Huzzah! To Argos, away!
Writer: *dies*

This is what we're reduced to, gentle readers - watching TV to watch people watch TV.

More shockingly, this is coming from C4 - the channel that, last year, aired a superb hour of television about the Prime Minister shagging a pig live on air in order to save a princess from death (maybe you had to be there?)

So, as TV comes to a deathly close, I'm off to buy my post-apocalypse wasteland survival kit - fingerless gloves, a scarf, a bit of face dirt, and a zombies-stopped-me-shaving beard. See you on the other side!


Neil's Weekly Rants are posts about stuff. Read more stuff here.

*   "Presumily" - deliberate typo. See Angel season 5, episode "Life of the Party"