Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 14/02/2007

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“Dad, you wouldn’t be very good at that,” observed one of the twins.

“No way, you’d be so rubbish at it!” agreed the other.

I stuck my head out from behind the newspaper. They were watching Dancing on Ice – one of a rash of celebrity talent shows that have reached epidemic proportions on our TV screens. A little known male “celebrity” in a ridiculous figure-hugging costume was struggling to keep up with his professional partner.

This time, I conceded, the girls were right: I would be utterly and completely useless.

The girls, being girls, were only interested in one thing: outfits. Was the next one going to be pink or purple, frilly or sparkly, which one looked the nicest and why on earth was that man wearing sequins? I can imagine boys watching the show, but for very different reasons. They’d be waiting for an accident: a spectacular fall, concussion, perhaps even a severed finger.

Shows like this are vying with the “reality” genre for prime slots on the TV schedule. Dancing on Ice, Strictly Come Dancing, Soapstar Superstar and others fill our screens. They’re on every night of the week, and if by some miracle you manage to avoid them, they repeat them at weekends. Arrrggghhh!

I’m just grateful that we don’t have teenagers in the house yet. Hopefully these shows will have run their course before the girls start pestering me for mobile phone credit so they can text in their votes. No wonder TV companies are filling their schedule with these things: they’re making money hand over fist!

What happened to good old fashioned telly: film, drama, a bit of comedy and a smattering of light entertainment. Variety used to be the order of the day, but today we’re presented with different flavours of the same old thing. Television has become so formulaic.

The problem is that good television demands imagination, and a willingness to invest time, money and talent in production. This new breed of show requires none of the above, and the results are every bit as vacuous as you might expect.

Every time I turn the telly on these days I’m reminded of exactly why I don’t watch much of it. It’s rubbish! And more channels just means more rubbish.

When we moved house we were expecting to pick up the usual terrestrial channels – RTE 1 and 2, TV3 and TG4. But for some reason the auto-tune picked up BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 as well. So we have eight channels to play with – and on any given evening there’s a fair chance that we’ll find nothing worth watching on any of them.

We toyed with the idea of getting satellite, but dismissed it after seeing it in action at mum and dad’s house. Satellite television is about quantity rather than quality. While choice is a good thing, adding hundreds of channels of dross to the mix just turns people into serial channel-flickers. No thanks!

In summer we tend to watch very little telly. Days are long, and outside beckons. But over the dark winter months curling up on the sofa in front of a warm fire to watch a bit of telly is a welcome treat for the whole family. Or it would be if there was anything good on!

The girls, I’m happy to say, are far from telly addicts. Even the little one, who likes watching Ballamorey in the morning, gets up and turns the box off when its finished. She’d rather play with her dolls house or do a jigsaw.

With some of the rubbish on telly these days I’m starting to see things her way. The dolls’ house looks ever more appealing, and before long I might even consider doing a jigsaw. Now that’s scary!

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