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Published on Friday 21 November 2008 14:10

Why is there so much rubbish on TV?

Prime time TV seems to be overloaded with reality shows of every ilk, from celebrity dancing in Strictly Come Dancing to has-been celebrities stuck in a jungle in I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here.

And I thought the one saving grace of the credit crunch and current economic downturn would be the welcome demise of the plethora of property renovation programmes and similar garbage relating to buying and selling houses. But that's not been the case.

Programmes such as Big Brother and the X-Factor have created an army of D-list celebrities in recent years who seem to have little or no apparent talent, other than the fact that they've appeared on TV.

When the much-talked about show was first aired in the summer of 2000 the national tabloids were saturated with stories about the contestants.

Everyone talked about nothing else other than Big Brother.

I was living in the London Borough of Harrow at the time and remember someone on the train constantly texting her mate to get running commentaries about what was happening on the show.

Eight years later people still rave on about how great Big Brother is. Why? It is absolute tripe.

There was a time when I was chastised over the fact that I didn't like Big Brother.

Well I tell you this for nowt. I'd much rather watch a decent documentary or drama show to stimulate my brain rather than some half-baked reality show.

You only get one life. Why saturate your brain with garbage?

In the 1990s there were excellent dramas on TV such as Sharpe, set in the Napoleonic Wars, which took a lot of thought into making.

It's a shame such programmes don't appear to be made anymore.

Escaping to the cinema to watch the latest release is not much better as around 75 per cent of films are now either romantic comedies or aminated films centred around personified animals such Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, the list goes on.

I now just buy DVDs of films or shows I used to enjoy watching - when TV and cinema-going were pleasurable experiences.


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Tuesday 29 May 2012

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