By the Bel: Idiot Box

Bel Says:

Which Idiot is on your Idiot Box??
Has anyone else noticed that the start of TV silly season started a little later than normal this year? I have always found it strange that we were missing out on Summer Bay the whole way through summer.
Could it be the integration of all the new HD channels that delayed the inevitable demise of all the decent programs for yet another year?

While we were buffeted by reruns of Two and a Half Men all freakin’ year by those whiz kids at Channel Nine, the newb channels found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow by back tracking beyond the Soup Nazi and Ross and Rachel’s off again/on again romance.

Who knew ALF really was funny, the Olsen Twins were once sweet, Leonardo Di Caprio has ALWAYS been that sexy, and Murphy wasn’t actually Brown at all We’re also learning that the shows we watch now aren’t always the first attempt at their moral heartbeat. Big Bang Theory wasn’t the first show highlighting the fact that smart people having feelings too. Just look at Head of the Class to find one of the earlier versions of trying to make smart look good (we’ll ignore their fashion sense, or lack thereof).

We’ve gone WAAAAY back to when racism and sexism wasn’t politically incorrect. Love Thy Neighbour, where the ‘black’ couple who move in next door are unashamedly the butt of many an ignorant comment and joke by their racist ‘white’ neighbour is one example.

There’s Man About the House, about the two busty broads and their male housemate, who live in the same building as the childless, middle-aged couple, George and Mildred (who just happen to also have a show all of their own).
One of my Mum’s favourite shows has just started being shown on 7Two. I can’t remember too much about All Creatures Great and Small, but I can remember Mum telling me most shows started with the country vet shoulder deep in a cow’s… well you get the idea.

For those of you who want to go back even further, there’s The Flintstones, Here’s Lucy, I dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. (These poor women, being stuck in the late 60s, with all the horrid expectations of the 1950s housewife. Yick!) Lucy was probably the most progressive of these 4 shows; it featured a leading lady who wasn’t actually at the beck and call of a husband, whose children were all grown up and not living at home anymore and who had a day job.

But back to the era of bad fashion and crime fighters. We’ve got Knight Rider, with the Hoff, Miami Vice, with Don Johnson, Magnum P.I, with Tom Selleck, and The A-Team. If you don’t know who Mr T is, think of  those Snickers adverts with the crazy guy wearing way too much bling, driving a tank, and throwing chocolate bars at guys who aren’t doing so well on the sporting field. That guy (the one hurling chocolate bars) was arguably the star of The A-Team.
If a blast from the past isn’t your thing and retro is just making you gag, you could always check out the couple of shows that aren’t undergoing rerun mania: The Amazing Race, Fringe, Raising Hope, The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars.

Whatever your poison when watching the idiot box, I hope you all have an amazing start to the school holidays. In the words of Porky Pig: “That’s all folks!”