A new bit of bloggage in which I regularly question the point of... something.
LOADS of things in this spacial orbit with us make absolutely no fucking sense so it's about time someone pointed that out, with words, pointy diagrams and fancy graphics. Well... words, at least.
Item #no 1 on the agenda - Last of the Summer Wine.
If you're British, there's no doubt you'll be familiar with this. It's been on our TV screens since, roughly, 740 BC, and the remarkable part is with largely the same cast. Sure, a few have died or fossilised themselves on screen and are now actually part of the set, but most are still involved and likely will be until the machines take over the Earth - what date does SkyNet go online again? Anyway, what is it? That's what anyone not British will be asking. Well... how best to explain it?
Larry David once described the greatest American sitcom, Seinfeld (pay attention), as a 'show about nothing'. Clearly, he'd never seen Last of the Summer Wine. Basically, the premise concerns a trio of doddery old men wandering around a Yorkshire village trying to recapture their youth, while escaping their harridan female wives/neighbours/tea shop owners/brothel madames. Ok, maybe not the last one. Anyway, the plot is thus: they walk about, they bump into people, they get into some kind of madcap scheme (unusually involving a bike or tin bath) and at the end, the same old man ends up crashing said thing after falling down a hill in it. AND THAT'S IT. Every. Single. Week.
It's actually got to the point now where the cast are literally, I suspect, in the middle of decomposition on screen. Infact, I no longer think they WILL die. I think that they will undergo some kind of skin-shedding process and be reborn young with the bodies of, maybe, German bodybuilders. At which point the show will re-invent itself and become about a group of ex-Chippendales trying to actually make their living in a small northern village. Given I'm literally background watching one on G.O.L.D right now that involves them trying to make contact with aliens at a mini-Stonehenge, I don't think as a twisty-plot device it would actually be all that far fetched.
Plenty of people would make the point that it's aimed squarely at the elderly given it's all ABOUT the elderly. Fair enough. But I'm sorry, when I'm old I really think I'll be wanting to watch something better than this. Granted, I'll probably be blind in both eyes and only be able to hear the vibrations of mice against the skirting board, but even so - I'd still expect a programme on TV that doesn't patronise and insult the intelligence like this twaddle. Not all old people have to be written as cuddly buffoons or harpies - look at Dad's Army. 40 years ago they were writing largely about the elderly in a much sharper, much more accomplished way than this. How a show which basically has repeated the same plotline for 300 episodes has survived beggars absolute belief.
Watch it, obviously, judge for yourself. In case you're not quite sure, it's apparently a comedy.
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