I don't watch a lot of TV. I never have. Mostly because there's nothing on. Well I mean that figuratively of course, there's always something on, but it's never what I'd want to watch. The BBC takes £120 of my money every single year, just so I can legally put a television set in my house, and yet my TV schedule remains so piss poor that I constantly ponder what they spend the money on. They certainly don't spend it on quality programming.
TV these days is a cold, uncomfortable affair, driven by sinister words like 'community' and 'inclusion'. But the fact that I live in the south-west doesn't mean that I want to watch more programmes about the south-west. It's the south-west, not south-central LA - nothing happens here. In fact, when something does happen here, it's so endlessly talked about and churned round on TV that it instantly becomes so boring that it might as well have occured on the planet zog. Nor do I want more programmes about getting young people into music, or dance, or whatever other arts sector your researchers think is 'hip'. The fact that there is crushing poverty and hardship in some parts of this country is not a clarion call for yet more talent-based elimination shows, where some girl even younger than me who has 5 kids cries backstage because the judges didn't like her 'performance'. What these social issues represent is an opportunity to tear into politicians over why nothing is being done. Why does it take a TV programme, of all things, to give these people hope? Do they not deserve a better quality of life otherwise?
I see TV as being easily divided into three parts; weekday daytime, weekday evening, and the weekend. God forbid you ever want to watch it during the daytime. I mean, what exactly do the elderly and the sick find interesting about an endless procession of shows telling you how to sell your house? Of course, nobody sells houses nowadays, so you get these wonderful little disclaimers at the end telling you the price was correct in...2005, because none of these programmes are new. No, the entire daytime schedule is made up of repeats. That is what we, as the fee payers, are worth. Weekend TV is just as bad. This is where you get the 'talent' shows mentioned above, whatever sport is in season, and - on sunday - the absolute drivel about religion. It's 2011, not 1950, and a large part of the population has no religion. Even if they do, I doubt it'll be Christianity, which seems to be the only religion in existance according to the BBC.
So we come to the weekday evening part where, if you're lucky, you might find something to watch. That is, if you like dramas about crime and law. What is it exactly about crime and law that the BBC find so fascinating? How many more programmes do we have to trudge through about digging up murder victims? If that doesn't satisfy your lust for the macabre, you've always got the stalwart hospital-based soap opera, where unfortunate nameless extras depart this life in a hail of blood and leaking organs, whilst the doctors and nurses talk a lot and don't do any actual work. This is what we're meant to be watching after we've had our dinner, by the way. If you've got half a brain and don't want to see dead bodies, there's nothing for you at the BBC.
That is why I was so pleased when they started the series of Outcasts a few weeks ago. I was skeptical at first that it would another one of those dull BBC dramas (I was sure crime and law would feature somehow) where the broadcaster valiantly tries to prove its worth and squarely ends up in the flat, dusty middle of the road. I was so pleasantly surprised when the show turned out to have a well-written plot that developed over the course of the series, touching on issues that stem from simple human nature but can become so complicated. There was no identifiable 'hero', and even the 'villian' could have justifiable motives. The characters were flawed, but because they had flaws I grew to genuinely like them. I grew to want the trouble on Carpathia to be resolved because I could see how the show was addressing the question of wether there is hope for our species in the long term.
I was somewhat miffed, then, when the series finished after only eight episodes, especially when the last episode ended on a huge cliffhanger. Each week, I got more and more frustrated with how the BBC decided to change the day and time that Outcasts was broadcast, with it being relegated to a late-night slot on Sunday. Nobody goes looking for quality TV that late on a weekend, and I sat there knowing that the ratings would suffer and that there would be the inevitable discussion over the programme's future. In fact, there wasn't even a discussion. It was quietly cancelled, without so much as a statement at the end of the first, and last, series. In a silly way, it felt like a balloon was being deflated somewhere in my brain. All the time I'd invested in those characters; all the emotions I'd felt along the way - it was all for nothing. What made it worse was that I went, expectantly, looking for the time of episode nine whilst clutching a handful of painkillers and a glass of wine, tears streaming down my face from the physical agony I was in that evening. What I wanted - what I needed - was a bit of lovely TV to take my mind off things. Something to make me happy, or sad even, but something to make me feel a response other than pain. Instead, I turned on the set to be met by the usual, awful, rubbish that's there every day. There was nothing to engage, nothing to interest, nothing even that I wouldn't have minded listening to in the background whilst I paced the floor waiting for the morphene to kick in.
TV in this country is broken almost beyond repair. It won't take much longer before it resembles the US system, where even the news is not required to have a basis in fact. The BBC is meant to be a wonderful institution that delivers wonderful programmes that inspire, interest, and even educate a viewing public that encompasses a huge range of backgrounds and opinions. But it consistently goes with the mundane, the bland, the 'safe' option. And it knows that it can get away with it because, for most families, the TV has replaced all other activities. It can get away with it by counting on people being so tired from working long hours for low pay in a job they despise that they'd much rather see if Leanne, 20, from Scunthorpe has got through another sing-off than have their minds and their eyes treated to a well-written drama. That is why, for the rest of us, there's never anything on.
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