Slight Demoralisation

Over the last couple of weeks, one of the satellite TV channels has been repeating one of my all-time favourite series, “The Closer“, and I’ve been recording and re-watching them. In some episodes it shows its age (it first went out in 2005) with the technology, phones etc., but that’s pretty much to be expected now.

Right from the start I liked it, each episode contained all the clues and ideas needed to solve the crimes, which raised it above an awful lot of the procedural dramas around. It was intelligent in a number of ways, but there was also a focus on personalities, clashes, and idiosyncracies.

I was well into it anyway, and then the last three episodes of the first season hooked me completely.  I won’t go into the details, but the final episode of Season One has the best apology ever seen on TV, and it still makes me laugh, even knowing it was coming.

However, it also has a bit of a downside.  The writing is so sharp, the characterisation so good (in my opinion, naturally) that I watch it – and a couple of other things, particularly “The West Wing” – and just find myself thinking that I’ll never be able to write like that.

I’m going to damn well try, don’t get me wrong, but yeah, it still makes me a bit demoralised about the whole thing. Fun and games.


Apprentice Thoughts

Once again, the BBC has a series of the Apprentice running. And yet again, every single contestant currently appears to be an inveterate fuckknuckle with all the business skills of a bundle of second-hand scrotum skin.

What I don’t understand about the competitors (more even than being so massively underprepared and underqualified) is what think will happen afterwards.  This year, there’s 18 competitors, and that means that 17 are going to lose, and go back to reality.

But anyone who has seen the programme will know that they’re insufferable, incompetent, and in most cases utterly vile human beings who couldn’t truly run a business if their lives depended on it.

So – what happens when they look for new work? Or even just return to the job where they’ve managed to negotiate a break or sabbatical? (Come to think of it, that situation might be even worse, with the added weight of expectations etc.)

I know that if, regardless of whether I were interviewing or being interviewed, any single one of them were in the room, I’d know they’re (at best) useless, gobby, opinionated, and shit at their supposed job; and wouldn’t work with them.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d do the same.

All told, pretty mind-boggling.


The End Is Nigh

ScroogeIt’s the first post of the year to see Scrooge!

As of tonight, we’re officially in the run up to the Festering Season.  How do I know? Because tonight on TV there’s the first episode of the new series of X-Factor.

Not that I’ll be watching it, but it’s definitely the harbinger of the year’s end…


Eating Well For Less

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been watching the BBC’s “Eat Well For Less” series.  It’s an interesting concept, helping people with their eating habits (and more accurately, their spending on food) by removing all the labelling and branding from food in people’s houses, removing all the prejudices etc. around their food spending.  They replace expensive branded stuff with ‘own-brand’ or cheaper alternatives (and in some cases with more expensive, but better/healthier options) and also leaving some things alone.  Additionally, they help people with recipes for their favourite meals, rather than buying pre-packaged and so on.

A lot of it is insanely annoying, but the core information is (in my opinion) worth it, for both the families on the programme, and people watching it.

But oh Dear God, those families are fucking pathetic. There’s lots of preconceptions about brands being preferred “because they wouldn’t be so popular if they weren’t the best” and so on, which drives me crackers.

The most recent one tonight, though, drove me crackers. One family member had been diagnosed as coeliac, and had spent six years eating salads he hated. Six. Fucking. Years.  How does anyone end up eating stuff they don’t like for six bloody years? There’s no logic in it that I can see – unless they haven’t done any enquiries or research about what’s got gluten in and so on?

In this case they were buying loads of pre-packaged food – and I get that more, because they were so worried about cross-contaminating from their foods to his, and making him ill – but with no thoughts or understanding. I think the peak point for me was buying pre-packaged “gluten-free” rice, not understanding that all rice is gluten-free, in the name of Jesus H Pant-shitting Christ.

So yeah, it’s been an interesting series, but Holy DogEggs, some people are fucking lazy/stupid/pathetic*.

(* Delete as applicable)


Life Stripped Bare

This week, Channel 4 had a one-off programme called “Life Stripped Bare“, which turned out to be pretty interesting.

It was basically about how people handle having no possessions. All their items, furnishing, clothing – everything – is taken away and put in storage, leaving them with absolutely nothing except the walls of their homes. It was slightly gratuitous, as all the participants had to strip off, leaving them to start the process completely naked. I understand the reasoning for it, but yeah, there seemed to be a lot more focus on that than was strictly necessary.

Each participant (a single woman, a house-share of a man and woman, and another house-share of two men and a woman) was allowed to get back one item a day from storage – although in all three cases, that storage unit was at least half a mile away, so they had to make the effort and journey in order to get those things. In autumn/winter. The first couple of days, where clothing was limited (to say the least) showed off their inventiveness all round – and the single woman in particular, whose first choice was a bolt of material, from which she fashioned a load of things, rather than just one thing.

It was interesting though, seeing what the people valued, what they couldn’t live without, and then what they did once everything was returned.  Naturally, with the participants being late-twenties and early-thirties, one of the things they had real problems living without was their phones, and being pretty much permanently connected to the world.

It also made me think about my own attitudes to possessions, what I have, what I value, what I could live without if I chose to. I think a lot of that would come down to semantics, for example whether “books” counts as one possession as a whole, or whether each one is an individual possession.

All told, there’s a lot I could live without if I had to or chose to. I wouldn’t want to be reduced all the way to zero possessions – I don’t think anyone truly would – but I think I probably could handle a significant reduction if I had to.

Anyway, it was an interesting programme, and made for some interesting thoughts – which I may write more about at some point in the future. Or not. We’ll see.


Stating The Obvious

Why is it that on just about every TV competition show – X-Factor, Masterchef, Bake Off, whatever – when it comes to the semi-finals, one of the hosts always has to say

Any one of these people could win it

Of course they fucking could, they’re in the semi-sodding-final. Stop stating the bloody obvious, you fatuous bollocks-spouting cretins.


Gameshows

I think one of the most depressing jobs currently has to be that of a gameshow host on some of the afternoon and evening quiz shows. Quite how they manage to listen to people getting basic stuff wrong without slamming their heads into the desks, or making comments along the lines of “How the fuck do you not know that?!?”

For me, the real trigger points are where it’s a question about (usually) books – although several other subjects get the same kind of responses – and the competitor says “Oh, I’m not really a reading person”. Rage ensues.

Please note, I’m not saying that reading should appeal to everyone, I get that there’s umpteen reasons why people don’t read as much. That’s fine. But still – and maybe it’s me being unrealistic – I kind of expect/hope that people would at least know that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth and Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist. You don’t have to have read them to know at least the basics about authors of classics, surely? (After all, I haven’t read either of those, but still know who wrote what)

I think it’s perhaps that the ‘general knowledge’ of a lot of the competitors is really quite focused, that there’s huge gaps in what they know. (And again, yeah yeah, everyone’s different, etc. etc.)  In most rounds – hell, even some of the less-specialist sport ones – I can get a number of correct answers.  OK, I’m lucky enough to be a complete bobble-hat with a decent memory – but I don’t believe I’m that exceptional.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this (you may have guessed) but it’s just something that’s been rattling round my head and annoying me for a fair while.