The Golden Age Of Television!

Alright, you don't really need to know my age, however for the purpose of this post it's relevant. For several years now I've noticed a steady decline in the quality of television programmes. Whether TV is being deliberately dumbed-down to make us a nation of mindless morons, or it's just too much effort to make anything worth watching, I can't say for sure. Possibly, a mixture of both reasonings. The fact is, I look back on the halcyon days of televisual festing that myself and my generation enjoyed in the late 70's and early 80's, with gerat nostalgia.

Who can forget programmes like:

• Monkey
• The Saint
• Sapphire and Steel
• Tales Of the Unexpected
• The Professionals
• Duty Free
• Alas Smith & Jones

Those are but a few. Kids TV was equally fantastic, with Will O' The Wisp, Jamie and the Magic Torch, Bagpuss, Captain Pugwash and so on and so forth. However, what's truly missing from modern TV scheduling in particular is the Saturday night super line-up. When I was a kid, the whole family could sit down on Saturday night, expecting and usually getting an excellent evening's entertainment. Nowadays, it's all reality shows and fame hunting wannabe shows. It's bland, pointless, non-entertaining and frankly patronising.

So why do they get away with it? Well to be honest, I think people would sit and watch anything, so the fact that they watch reality shows should be no surprise. The latest Big Brother series is in a way ironic I reckon. They've filled a house with empty-headed imbeciles and empty-headed imbeciles quite happily sit for hours lapping up their non-sensical babble and pearls of wisdom, ie:

Liam mentions Romeo and Juliet.

Brian: "What's Romeo and Juliet? Ain't Romeo that geezer out of So Solid Crew?"

Liam: "No, Romeo and Juliet is a play by Shakespeare!"

Brian: "Who's Shakespeare?"

Liam "He's a famous playwright!"

Brian: "What? Somebody's famous for writing plays?"

Liam: "Yeah, everyone's heard of him!"

Brian: "I didn't really pay much attention at school!"

Personally, I would question whether Brian ever went to school, becaus in my recolletion, you had to do at least a couple Shakespeare plays in Secondary. That and Lord Of the Flies... unavoidable! To be fair, that conversation is slightly entertaining, but just think to yourself how amny people must have been watching that and thinking "Yeah, who the hell IS Shakespeare?" And that's the really sad part, what the hell are kids learning at school? Maybe if they showed some Shakespeare on the TV, kids would have a better idea who he was. However, I suspect that there's a much bigger can of worms to be opened, once you start probing the minds of young adults and comparing what they should know with what they actually do know. I suspect severe deficiencies in several departments! I'm 36 by the way!