How I've Learnt To Love The Inventors Of Videotape. The Experiment (Part 3)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

The next day then of channel surfing. The previous posts explains the experiment.Ten pm Saturday 30 December

ITV3 + 1 : Midsomer Murders: I've explained in a previous post how much I hate this show. One second. Click.

QVC Beauty : Shopping Channel. One second click.

Quest:Aliens On The Moon: No time for reality TV ghosts no time for reality TV Aliens either. One minute click.

Quest Red: The Jury Speaks: Another crime thing. This time the Jury on the Michael Jackson case. Not interested. Two minutes click.

CBS Action; NCIS: I've mentioned that I like this show. Unfortunately I've seen this episode before. And when I say "before" I mean this week. Two minutes click.

Food Network: Mystery Diners: Seems to be a show about security cameras trailing dodgy valets. Not for me.Five minutes click.

Travel channel : Life Before Zero - The Thaw: People living in cold climes that are less cold that they were.....????....rubbish. Two minutes click.

Gems TV: Another Shopping Channel. Turned over quickly but not before the woman selling jewels said that they had "A melody of colours". What??

Channel 5 + 1: The Championship: To be honest have lost track of football West Ham aside this week. Ten minutes click.

Challenge TV: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Simon Cowell is in it. Five minutes click.

FourSeven: The Simpsons. I've said before am neutral towards The Simpsons. Which for the purposes of this means uninterested. Four minutes click.

Movies4Men: The Gundown: You know being a man I can honestly say I've never watched a full movie on this channel. Nothing changes here. Two minutes click.

The Jewellery Channel: No melodies here. No interest from me either. One minute click.

Sony Movie Channel: Swat Firefight: Too old for this. One minute click.

My5:Jo Brand's Cats & Kittens: I'm not scared of cats as I am of dogs....doesn't mean I'm interested though. Two minutes click.

True Crime: Dangerous Women. Another crime show. Two women try to kill a man in four minutes on the TV. People who like this probably read Dean Koontz. Enough for me to turn over five minutes.Click.

True Entertainment:November Christmas: What???? This rubbish Christmas mush still on after it's finished? One minute click.

True Christmas: A Town Without Christmas: Well of course this town is without Christmas.....it's December 30th!!!! One minute click.

Blaze TV: Secret Access. UFOs Off The Record. Remember what I wrote about Quest TV? Ditto here.One minute click.

TBN UK: A religious channel.....I'm an atheist...One Minute click.

CBS Reality: Killer Doctors On Death Row night: Definitely not. Two minutes click.

Tru TV: Caught red handed: Series About Catching Shoplifters....I mean really ? One minute click.

My mother wakes up, time to finish up. Not a successful night.

Day Four then of the channel hopping experiment. It's 16:13 New Year's Eve

Horror: Icetastrophe: Don't really understand this channel. The Horror stuff comes late at night. This is just about people stuck in a snow storm. Two minutes click.

CBS Drama: Unsolved Mysteries: Another reality American crime series. A missing woman from the Chinese community being taken by a man. Would have turned over quicker but the phone rings.

Your TV: Body of Proof. Well I've praised this show before in this blog so I've no excuse not to watch it now. Especially as the only other channels are for children and news addicts.

So in my present situation I'm going to have to get used to this for a while.

Until the next time.

Murder He Watched (aka Watch With Mother)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I am, as I'm writing this, in Essex, collecting my daughter following her week and a bit long stay at my mother's who showed her the London sights. Come down one day leave the next.

It is always a pleasure to see my mother, but like all families that pleasure means tolerating things you wouldn't put up in anybody else (I'm sure she'd say the same about me.....but it's my blog so there).

What I was conscious yesterday evening was that one of those things was watching television. Now am not saying that my tastes are better but they are different. And as I don't see her on a regular basis I feel rude putting headphones on and shutting myself off from the immediate world.

So I have to go retro and watch with mother.

My mother, like many other sweet, shall I say mature?, ladies has a taste for TV crime series. The programme we watched together last night was Murder She Wrote. I could see why she liked it. Jessica Fletcher was clearly a role model for ladies of her years. Aged well, was fit and active, talented, wealthy but most of all mentally stable. With an intelligence to solve murders that the local police force in the village she lived in in Maine (that is to say geographically judging by the show bordering California) is unable to solve. This inability then being spread out across the globe to affect many other forces of law and order.

If this was real life of course her local police force would be under investigation for it's inability to solve crimes without the help of a pensionable amateur.

And as I'm watching this piece of utter drivel (one hour incl commercials) I think that a more realistic aged amateur detective would have more wrinkles, consider walking to be exercise enough and would be struggling to live on the pension. If that was on TV then I'd watch it willingly.

But don't think her taste is solely on American trash. There's Midsomer murders. The programme I watched as if in a coma with her last year. Set in the fictional county of Midsomer, the only county it appears consisting just of a collection of villages and no towns/cities, it follow the experienced detective and his sidekick as they solve murders in the chocolate box England they live in.

An England which incidentally (as I understand it) did not have anyone until fairly recently whose skin colour wasn't white

This is two hours of cliché English drivel. It drives my brain to mush. Where is Inspector Morse when you need him?

But I have to watch. I'm with my mother.

(As a quick aside the only time I've ever willingly watched it was in Italy. British TV programmes watched overseas is some sort of electronic comfort blanket. A programme you'd cross the street to avoid in Britain suddenly becomes interesting).

The other crime programme my mother watched is Taggart. A show that I liked in the beginning but seemed at the end to be performing some sort of cull on the population of Glasgow. Do you know who my mother has also made a fan now? My daughter.

Suppose these things jump generations.

Until the next time