TV: America knows best

Truth be told, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the United States of America. Invasions of Middle-Eastern countries aside, they butchered the English language and maintain a general lack of awareness of the world they (mostly) control. (Incidentally, I don’t wish to stereotype all Americans in this bracket, there are a good deal of very aware and intelligent people over there – that’s the law of averages for you.) I tend to resent somewhat its influence.

However, it’s difficult not to develop a grudging respect for the total superiority of American television over that of the British. I think I would have a very hard time dealing with the (rather wide) shadow of the stars and stripes that encompasses the globe if it were not for the saving graces of (to name but a few) Lost, 24, House, Battlestar Galactica and so on and so on.

There just seems to be something about the American mentality that lends itself to making amazing TV. There may be a link between the fact that Americans tend to be more outgoing and less guarded than the stereotypical Englishman and the far more edgy nature of American TV. People take risks with ideas and hence we see shows like 24, which created an entirely new format for how a TV show could exist – the real-time hour-per-episode length that we take for granted with the show now that it’s had six seasons. I can’t see anyone in Britain having ever made a programme like that.

Of course, after things become great successes in the US, then the British market start making bad copies of it – witness Spooks, which can try all it want but it’s always going to be an inferior 24 without the time gimmick. On the other end of the genre scale, the frankly pathetic Mistresses that recently failed to set BBC One viewers alight is a painfully crap rehash of the superb Desperate Housewives. (Yes, I’m male, I watch Desperate Housewives. You try it, then try and laugh.)

Occasionally, American TV gets so good that it passes its own viewers by. Joss Whedon’s magnificent space western Firefly suffered this fate – it was critically acclaimed, rightly so, as one of the very best television series of recent years, but just couldn’t get the viewers to survive. As I mentioned not long ago, Jericho found itself in a similar situation (though I’m not about to claim that Jericho is anywhere near as awesome as Firefly).

The only thing that Britain has to pride itself upon is Doctor Who, which continues to fly the flag for family entertainment. The fourth season starts up again on Saturday 5th April and despite the thoroughly disappointing return of Catherine Tate as the new companion, it’s going to be a cracker. Torchwood’s second season has done much to make up for the horrendous first effort, but it needs to be this good consistently to earn its place next to its parent show as genuinely great British TV. Life on Mars was the only other really excellent production we’ve had recently, and even that is having its reputation eroded away somewhat by the lacklustre Ashes to Ashes spin-off.

This is a great time of year for the British viewer, but it’s barely anything to do with our own TV. Running alongside Doctor Who (and, frankly, probably outshining it) will be the fourth seasons of Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica and Desperate Housewives. Fantastically, all of the above are on different days of the week, so almost every day there is going to be some compelling telly to watch. And it’s all thanks to our friends across the Atlantic. God Bless America!

Five Days of Disappointment

My hearty apologies for not having posted for a few days. An end-of-term work rush has meant that the Desk has had to take a back seat, but now that I have a two-week break for Easter, it’s time to catch up on some of the things that have been going on while this blog wasn’t.

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Since my last post it’s been pretty much disappointing news after disappointing news.  Arthur C. Clarke’s death on Wednesday was particularly affecting – a true visionary, whose books I enjoyed thoroughly (although, to be fair, 2001: A Space Odyssey was far too slow) and way of thinking I always respected. Obviously, by the time I’d become familiar with his stories and, more importantly, his ideas on what might be possible in the technological future, a number of them had already come to pass, but it’s hard not to be impressed with the way he foresaw global communications satellites (nay, designed them) and NASA’s Spaceguard Survey that detects incoming asteroids. He’ll be missed.

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In slightly less life-or-death matters, I was also saddened to see that American TV network CBS has canceled Jericho, the sci-fi-ish drama about an isolated Kansas town being cut off from the rest of America after a nuclear attack. I didn’t watch Jericho when it the first season arrived on ITV4, but my mother did, and eventually I ended up catching the last five or six episodes, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Its plausibility was scary, and the writing and acting of a pretty good standard throughout. I knew the show had been canceled once already at the end of that season, but, in reference to a line of dialogue from an episode I sadly didn’t see, fans sent the network approximately 18,000 kilograms of peanuts until they relented and picked it up for a new season. So Jericho came back for season two, and now after 7 episodes it’s being pulled. Frankly, it’s a complete injustice, especially when you consider that the third (THIRD!) season of Grey’s Anatomy started on five two days ago. Ugh.

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However, it’s not all been doom and gloom. It turns out that they’ve figured out a way to allow mobile phone calls on aeroplanes! Oh, wait, that’s not good news. Have these scientists ever been on a train or a bus since the advent of the conveniently sized mobile? The law of averages states that on every flight operated by Emirates, the airline who have started this policy, there will be at least ten people who will now spend the entirety of the hours-long flight yelling into their phone to their mother, boyfriend, hairdresser, dog, etc., etc…

I am never flying ever, ever again.

See you tomorrow.