TV is everyone’s friend in need
IONCE read that every hour of television watched shortens a person’s average life expectancy by 22 minutes. In which case, I may be lucky to see Bonfire Night. I’m not talking about the quality of what you’re viewing – although there have been times when I have endured Love Island and found myself losing the will to live.
No, I mean the sheer sedentary nature of watching the box.
And, until the recent lockdown, that was at its height when I was a kid. Let’s face it, there wasn’t much to do if you grew up in the 1970s but watch telly. You could play out, of course
– but that was weather dependent. Or, if you had the money, you might go to the cinema on a Saturday morning. But computers and mobile phones were things you might only see on Tomorrow’s World. Travel wasn’t a thing in our house – we made it to Blackpool once a year – and opportunities to do gymnastics or pony club or Brownies just weren’t on the agenda.
So telly it was. It provided entertainment and education and a window onto an unexplored world for hours at a time.
So I gorged on Blue Peter and Magpie. Saturday mornings were filled with Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Tom and Jerry cartoons, the early evenings dominated by Jackanory and Rhubarb and Custard.
Later, and allowed to stay up late, it was Starsky and Hutch and Hill Street Blues. I hid behind the sofa at Doctor Who and Salem’s Lot (remember that?) and we gathered as a family to roar with laughter at Dad’s Army and the Good Life.
And it was the same for millions of others.
Television was one of the key planks of life which bound us together as communities and as a nation.
There was no video and no streaming. There were very few channels – I know, it’s like a different age, isn’t it? – but telly was a shared event, the common denominator among family and friends and the people you worked with and the stranger at the bus stop.
People talked about it, compared notes on what they had seen, speculated on what was to come. I suspect that’s why some of those programmes we all remember have passed almost into folklore – the Morecambe and Wise specials, Tom Baker as Doctor Who, John Noakes and his climb up Nelson’s Column. By the time I had grown up, that ‘golden age’, as it’s often referred to, was over.
Of course there were stand-out shows but there was more choice, both on the small screen and in life in general. Telly fragmented and catch-up came along and suddenly it didn’t matter if you’d missed an episode of Corrie because you didn’t have to be home to see it.
And then lockdown arrived and suddenly it was like 1978 again but without the flares.
There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Restrictions meant nobody was travelling or eating out or going to the gym. And once again telly came into its own.
It’s not quite the same, I grant you. There are dozens and dozens of things to watch wherever and whenever you want.
But there has also been a return to ‘appointment’ TV.
Bake Off is huge. I’m a Celebrity will be bigger. People talk about Repair Shop and the Sewing Bee but now it’s in real time on Twitter and Facebook, not necessarily the day after. The golden age of telly is back.
And at a time when we all need to be taken out of ourselves, to feel perhaps less alone and more connected, that humble box in the corner has been a lifesaver for many.