Dallas Day Twenty Five
When I am at home, setting my video (yes I know, a video recorder – how 20th century – but it works for me), it always seems to me that I watch quite a bit of American television.
I am now in America, the home of American TV. The television in my hotel room has 79 channels. So have I enjoyed my tv-watching experience?
I have to say, no, it’s been pretty underwhelming.
Here are the main things I’ve been watching over the past 4 weeks:
- Robot Chicken – this is just extremely silly and childish. It’s made up of a series of very short sketches, many of which are parodies of other tv shows. I suppose it’s a cartoon for teenagers, since it appears in the Adult Swim part of the Cartoon Network. It hits the mark enough to be watchable, and the individual sketches are so short that it’s not too painful when a sketch is rubbish.
- Family Guy – I could watch this at home any time on BBC3, but I usually don’t. Here it seems to be the most watchable thing I can find between 9:30 and 11:00. An amazing fact I recently discovered is that Seth MacFarlane does the voices of Peter the dad, Brian the dog, and Stewie the baby. They don’t sound at all alike – I’m impressed.
- Stargate Universe – this is a new programme from the people who previously brought us Stargate and Stargate Atlantis. I’m not convinced that it’s going very well.
- King of the Hill – again, I could watch this at home, but usually don’t. But at the end of a hard day’s work, it’s a much more gentle comedy than Family Guy, and a reasonable background for blogging.
So where is the quality television? Heroes, Fringe and Dollhouse are all being shown, but I haven’t caught any of them. There must be some funny scheduling going on. Oh, I did catch a repeat of Lost one night too.
So it’s true what they say – there’s 57 channels but there’s nothing on.
Tags: Television