Television: Deciphering the daytime schedule (Part One)

Daytime TV by Tom NashHaving spent a significant proportion of the last five years studying the craft of writing, daytime television- while never attaining a spot close to my heart- is something that helped fuel my cynicism and general distrust in the world. So on a day off from my paid work, I decided to check out what’s on these days.

To bring you, my faithful readers, a well-researched and thoroughly devised blog post, I sat down in my pants, with a coffee (Brian Wogan, you are awesome, by the way) and a bacon sarnie and tried to get through a typical day’s schedule (on Freeview, Murdoch ain’t getting my money) without losing the will to live.

I’m still alive and my findings are as follows:


Breakfast TV
By the looks of things, a muted, inoffensive type of programming for muted, inoffensive people. The news stories are spoon-fed to the viewer as it is on far too early for any detailed information to be dispensed, which is probably why the news bits are broken up with interviews with irrelevant celebrities and segments by roving reporters who are always in some rubbish place reporting on something shit that doesn’t matter…

I’m not a morning person.

If current affairs aren’t your thing, Channel 4 shows awful, formulaic, ‘family friendly’ American sitcoms, but if you laugh at any ‘joke’ in ‘According to Jim’, you are officially an awful person and your sense of humour is shit. There can be no debate. If the writers of that abomination still manage to find work, there’s definitely hope for me and anyone else that can hold a pen without hurting themselves.


I didn’t bother with Daybreak, but who does?



The morning schedule
On BBC One, Gollum’s cockney lookalike presents a couple of shows that seem to be specifically designed to fear monger and outrage Daily Mail readers. Sandwiched between these is a show about house auctions presented by two of the smuggest looking fuckers on the planet. Thrilling.

ITV settles in for an hour of pointing and laughing at thick, toothless, (sometimes fat) tracksuited people who nine times out of ten have been caught fucking a thick, toothless, (sometimes fat) tracksuited person that isn’t the thick, toothless, (sometimes fat) tracksuited person they usually fuck.

Luckily our boy Jezza is there to explain the errors of their ways by patronising the shit out of them… HAHAHA, they look funny and aren’t very clever! Jeremy Kyle, you legend! HAHAHA.

Then, when we’ve laughed at the funny poor people just the right amount, it’s time for This Morning, a wondrous mix of whatever the fuck will fill two hours; carefully scripted outrage; ‘fashion shows’; terrible, rushed recipes; epically boring phone-ins and quite possibly the same irrelevant celebrity that was on the breakfast shows earlier.

The real gem at this time though, is The Wright Stuff. The amazing Matthew Wright- who, I would like to add, has impeccable taste in football clubs- his weird scrunched-up-face-smile and some people from TV-land that weren’t busy that day read the papers and get really angry about the stuff they read, then the loneliest people in Britain call in and share their opinions, which only ever seem to be slightly re-worded versions of what our celeb-of-the-day just said. It’s great.

Channel 4? People buying/doing up houses. Next.

Midday
By this time I was contemplating the viability of ‘kerb-stomping’ myself for having this idea in the first place but I ploughed on, through the exquisitely condescending and contrived Cash in the Attic where some spack with no savings tries to raise enough money for a holiday by selling anything in their house that looks old and on to Bargain Hunt, where things get really depressing.

Over a decade ago, douchebag students thought they were ironic and cool for applying to be on this programme… And it seems they still do. So a pair of douches and a couple of ‘wacky’ old birds are given money to buy antiques. They buy some crap at a car boot sale on the instruction of an ‘expert’ and then they sell them for a loss at auction and celebrate the wasting of a few hundred pounds of license-payer money… A recipe for classic television.

At about the same, Loose Women is on ITV. Nightmare fuel at its most concentrated. A panel of terrorhawks high on HRT-patches talk solely about current affairs and ‘snogging’, offering half-baked solutions to insignificant problems that are parroted from equally deluded sources. They also say the word ‘snog’ and talk about ‘snogging’ more than any human that actually has regular contact with another human that respects them does…

If I never see that shambles again it’ll be too soon. Five hours in the shower and the dirt still won’t come off…

Channel 4 was showing some shit presented by an H.E. teacher that appeared to be about tight people that assume everyone can sew/cook/are as tight as them… Meh.

Click here for Part Two.

http://thewritetomnash.co.uk

3 thoughts on “Television: Deciphering the daytime schedule (Part One)

  1. Tom Nash

    I did. And I’ll do it again: The bloke presenter looks like a shiny testicle… See. =P

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