Autumn viewing

The new TV schedules start soon. The difference between summer and the rest of the time is atonishing with almost nothing to interest me in summer.

Between BBC, ITV and C4 there was always plenty to interest me in the UK and then came satellite TV which I eventually got via cable. What with the football and the movie channels, I found I watched very little 'traditional' TV, but I'm not sure that was just due to the availability of footie and movies; I think there was an element of TV just not being that good then.

I don't know. Maybe it was a bit of the old "it was better in my day" thing or maybe the TV companies lost their way a bit. By all accounts the fare served up seems to be back to old standards now.

It's probably good that I got out of the habit of watching TV programs before I moved here, so that there wasn't too much of a comedown for me. The CSIs, Criminal Minds, some Law & Orders etc are quite good but they're all cop shows. CBC (Canada's BBC) produces some excellent stuff but it's like they're only allowed to produce one good drama series every couple of years. Maybe it takes their whole drama budget; they really ought to be able to do more but maybe their hands are tied.

Anyway, summer seems to be full of so called Reality TV. Next Top Model, Hell's Kitchen (Chef contest), Idol, Dance.....

They are really talent shows, so why can't we just call them that?

Come Autumn anything new that's good seldom gets retained. You just get into something that's a bit more original than a run of the mill cop show and suddenly it disappears from the schedules because the American audience doesn't have the patience, concentration or understanding necessary and it's dropped.

Strangely, although the newspaper is full of previews and news of the new schedules, they don't cover anything else about TV. There's no review of "last night's TV", hardly any detail in the listings and when a show has been pulled you only discover it from internet searches done to find out what happened. It's all very strange.

We do get the Miss Marple mysteries and I enjoy those. Also the UK version of Law and Order. I probably wouldn't watch it in England or at least not avidly. But it has been on in the summer and it's been like an oasis for me.