TV to snuggle down to on the sofa
WThis is the television time of year, when it gets dark just as you finish work
E HAVE been watching the TV series Succession in the Henderson household, so it’s all effing this and effing that around the house at the moment. “Have you fed the effing cat, dear?”
“No, I’m just about to walk the effing dog but I’ll give the cat his effing dinner when I get back.”
That kind of thing. I hope the neighbours can’t hear us. What would they think?
If you haven’t seen it, the show, about a deliciously horrid and wealthy American family, is like a kind of Dallas or Dynasty for the 21st century – full of intrigue, treachery, dreadful behaviour and SO much swearing.
It is wonderfully written, acted and filmed, but the holiday words come thick and fast from start to finish, so be prepared.
This is the television time of year, when it gets dark just as you finish work and the autumn chill is setting in. If you walk the (effing) dog, or go for a run, or whatever you do, you get home early, get a shower and plonk yourself down on the sofa with your dinner on a tray. Listen to the rain lash against the windows, hear the wind tear at the trees outside, then find something worth watching somewhere among your 135 television channels, endless catch-up services and online entertainment feeds. There were just the three channels when I was a lad, by the way – just the three, and I can remember the ballyhoo when the third one was launched: and colour TV too; what a wonderment that was.
Now, pick your way through the endless panel show repeats and home improvement programmes, eliminate anything with George Clarke, Sandi Toksvig and/or Alan Davies in it, and you’ll be down to about three channels again, just like it was in the 1970s.
One of them will be showing an episode of M*A*S*H* without a shadow of a doubt, so it will be just like it was then. All you need to make the picture complete is Edward Heath and a power cut.
But documentaries are proving to be our saviour, along with the Machiavellian manoeuvring of those effing Americans.
We’re picking the bones out of Blair and Brown right now, walking the coast path and riding on trains with Michael Portillo. Who would have thought the former poster boy for the Thatcherists would turn out to be such a warm and welcome presence in lounges up and down the land just a few years later? He got soaked to the skin on one of his walks the other day, and instead of arguing politics with him I just wanted to make him a cup of tea.
That’s the magic of television.
Then there was the show where schoolchildren from 2021 were televisually transported back in time to the 1970s to experience what life was like in the classroom 50 years ago.
This was right up my street. They struggled with the rudimentary computers and fell foul of draconian uniform rules, just like we did. Their teachers, in turn, struggled to cope with the styles of the time. It’s a wonder we ever got taught anything.
We’ve been sad to see the end of the series in which two old geezers went fishing and spent their days catching very little and talking about nothing much in the most charming and uplifting way you could imagine.
And we’re baking, of course. Who would have thought a series about a bunch of very ordinary people making cakes would become the sensation of the age?
Now we’re all about the creme pat and the rough puff.