Gazette reporter Dave Robson is starting to feel that he's become a miserable let down to the TV watching fraternity
Most of my childhood days were spent at school, playing footy in the street or watching telly - there was little middle ground.
We may only have had three telly channels (I still view Channel Four as a relative newcomer) but, especially during school holidays, I was intimately acquainted with what each showed - from the opening Tyne Tees music in the morning to the epilogue at night and most things in between.
But oh, what a miserable let down to the TV watching fraternity I’ve become.
If your workplace is anything like mine (which I doubt in so many ways), there’ll be lots of chatting about TV series which are, as they say, all the rage. And I don’t mean the soaps.
No, it’s the phenomenon of the “fantasy” drama - or, if you’re really lucky, the gritty and epic fantasy drama.
Series like Game of Thrones which enthuse colleagues to such a degree, I feel like the kid who keeps missing the party.
Often emanating from US cable networks, they usually end up on Sky Galactic or whatever over here and attract such a cult following, you can imagine the major networks kicking themselves for not snapping them up.
Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Prison Break, Dexter... hundreds of hours of TV magnificence, apparently, yet I’ve seen not one second.
It’s the intensity of the plot discussions which amaze me. Normally sane people who I respect and love in a very human way end up in wide-eyed conversations about the disembowelling of King Nathuzar or whatever as if it really happened.
Well, it didn’t. It’s a TV show.
Then there’s the craze of box-set bingeing, where people with too much time on their hands watch episode after episode in a marathon telly stretch.
Look, I realise I’m in a minority of one here - me, the lad whose world used to revolve around the telly yet is now mystified by large chunks of it. But listening to some of the conversations does make me wonder if I’m missing out.
Take the most recent Penny Dreadful (?) discussion: “Yeh, the missus was a bit upset by the disembowelled kids and the dead babies.” You don’t say. Honestly, women can be so sensitive.
Talk then switched to a “brilliant French detective series” which, apparently, has been labelled the Gallic equivalent of The Wire.
And no, I haven’t watched The Wire either.
It all sounds a bit too much for me. Frankly, after a hard day at Gazette Towers, I don’t have the energy or the staying power - just ask Mrs R.
In any case, I’m not sure I want to get too engrossed in shows that invariably attract such terms as “gritty” (in other words, violent and sweary), “fantasy” (weird and smutty) or challenging (incomprehensible, but with violence, swearing AND smut.)
After all, I work at the Gazette - I get enough of that on a daily basis. I’ll stick with Sky Sports News.
No comments:
Post a Comment