TV programs you hate

basically anything produced by ITV

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Didn’t mind ITV when it had the balls to put stuff like Spitting Image, but ended up not really watching much of it past my teens. The only thing I ever intentiionally watch on ITV is football, and that’s normally because there’s no choice. and normally out of protest.

Just a thought, but should this thread be re-titled to:-

“TV programs you hate because they reveal your significant other to be a culture-free embarrassment”

?

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That’s about the size of it, although the Ayatollah will probably counter that I am a sports obsessed bore.

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Originally posted by @pap

Originally posted by @PhilippineSaint

basically anything produced by ITV

Didn’t mind ITV when it had the balls to put stuff like Spitting Image, but ended up not really watching much of it past my teens. The only thing I ever intentiionally watch on ITV is football, and that’s normally because there’s no choice. and normally out of protest.

And their football presentation is crap too!

Mrs SOG doesnt care for football so I usually only watch it if she is out or doing something else. Apart from showing that I am a kind and caring new man type, it also gives me leverage if she hints at watching Location Location Location.

This

I guess Newsnight tries to provide a bit more depth but I tend now to listen to radio news and programmes like More or Less and Analaysis on the radio.

Interestingly, Evan Davis was interviewing newspaper editors on The Bottom Line about the changes in their industry and they pointed out that it was relatively pointless trying to provide headlines and ‘news’ as such, and that their stock in trade was increasingly longer, more detailed and nuanced analytical and opinion pieces. The Guardian guy said he saw one of their main competitors being Vice, the online analysis website.

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There has been an awful lot of dumbing down in the media over the last few years. I am all for them trying to make things more accessible for people like me who need things spelt out but, as ever when you get one extreme, it ends up going too far the other way. I can even answer a few questions on University Challenge now! I remember well when New International took over The Times and Murdoch saying that he didnt want to produce a paper for Bishops anymore. Well, The Times was a paper of record and much respected at that. What is it now? Just another NI propaganda sheet. I stopped buying newspapers a long time ago, which is pretty sad when you consider that I worked in the industry for 30 years. I’ll read one if it is lying around on a train or in a cafe but as has been said, the news element is poor and it is all about analysis and opinion now. I doubt if any of my children have ever read a newspaper from cover to cover. No bad thing nowdays but we used to have one delivered years ago and between that and the TV I used to have a pretty good idea of what was going on. My kids dont, and they dont care. Sad state of affairs.

I no longer have access to terrestrial TV and as such don’t pay a TV Licensing fee.

It’s glorious.

Anything with Keith Lemon in. Surely it’s had it’s time.

Googlebox

Xfactor/Britains got talent

Dragons Den

Come Dine with me / 4 in a bed type things.

Any football / golf/ cricket/ rugby / sport in general.

Jeremy Kyle (pretty much on in every home I do a home visit to - which is pretty worrying really).

Sky/ITV news

I am sure there are more.

I can’t believe we’ve missed this, or at least, I certainly can’t believe that everyone thinks that they are a good thing.

Panel shows. Cheap fucking panel shows. It wasn’t so bad when HIGFNY was in its pomp, or Amstel was presenting Buzzcocks. The genre is a clear example of “that’s cheap. it worked. let’s do more of that!”. There was briefly hope that the entire yarn would be unspun when the insanely uneven Mock The Week unleashed Frankie Boyle unto mainstream television, throwing the assembled passengers on the Panel Show Gravy Train Express into stark relief, temporarily showing everyone else on the show (and to a certain extent, the wider Panel Show Universe) to be the self-neutering cheap chuckle chasers they actually are.

These shows aren’t even content to shit in their own formats. Nope, they have to gratuitously lace their wackiness into beloved gameshows, because they’ve presumably realised that the pure panel show is running dry. 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown? Jimmy Carr sexually assaults Countdown, more like. Richard “twice nightly” Whiteley is probably stomping around the afterlife screaming “send me back! these bastards cannot be allowed to desecrate my works.”

I’d love to make individual allowances, because there are some interesting individuals on those panels, but I really can’t. Every Paul Merton enables a Jimmy Carr. Every David Mitchell creates justification for a Lee Mack, and even David Mitchell is starting to get on my tits these days on panel shows, but he’ll always be a legend on Peep Show.

Panel shows. Cheap, infinite shit.

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This weekend the tv swingometer is firmly pointing in my direction. With the start of the rugby World Cup, I now have first dibs on the remote. It’s just a shame there are not more games to crowd out the Ayatollah’s viewing schedule completely

ITV produce some excellent dramas - Foyle’s War a particular favourite of mine. It does get irritating with the constant ad breaks, but I rarely get to watch them when they go out, so can usually fast-forward through them.

Other noteable good progs from ITV this year include:

Safe House

Black Work

The Trials of Jimmy Rose

Arthur and George

Two shows for exactly the same reason.

How Clean Is Your House?

The Biggest Loser.

Both shows are clearly targeted at the mostly indolent. Live in a shithole? Here’s an even bigger shithole! You don’t have to feel as bad, or bother tidying for six months, as it happens.

Same principle going on with Biggest Loser really, except they use morbidly obese people to validate fat bastards.

All those Housewives of …

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Eastenders. Bloody hate it. Watch it if you want to feel talented though!

Argh…caught a double whammy the other day. Walked in to find that not only was Deal or No Deal on but that it was a celeb version featuring James effing Corden :astonished: Not only that, his sister was on. I dont know what their mother used to feed them but she is even bigger than he is. I made my excuses and left the room.

Does the England Wales match qualify for this thread?

I often ask people that watch their soaps if they have considered Star Trek instead. (stay with me!).

I used to watch Eastenders fairly religiously at the age of fifteen. I didn’t really have a lot of options back in the day, and yes, watching gobby cockneys fuck/murder/say “what’s going on?” a lot seemed to fill a void. A couple of years in, I realised a few things about soap operas.

  1. They’re the TV equivalent of being strung along. Nearly all of EastEnders is about building stuff up for the Christmas episodes. Very little happens week to week.

  2. Apart from the sex, infidelity and murder, it’s not actually that much more interesting than normal mundane life.

  3. It never fucking ends. EastEnders will probably still be on the TV in 2115. You’ll never know what happens.

So back to Star Trek. Each episode tends to have some conclusions, human behaviour is dealt with through the abstraction of science fiction, and it’s over in seven seasons, maximum. Of course, when you mention this to non-Star Trek EastEnder fans, they look at you as if you’ve got two heads. You might even get called a geek or a nerd.

The funny thing is that these people are just as geeky or nerdy about EastEnders. Quite why they think they’ve got the cultural high ground because no Galaxy-class starships land outside the Queen Vic is beyond me.