Saturday 2 January 2016

Repetitive Televisual Syndrome

Last night on the television, a programme called (something like) DCI Banks came on.

"Ooh", I thought, "I saw that once, and I rather liked it. How exciting."

(Well, "exciting" might be pushing it, but "how mildly pleasing" is not even "mildly interesting", so I'll stick with the exaggeration).

Anyway, the programme began, and I realised that the thing that has happened to me with countless television series was happening - that is, the episode they were screening was the same one I'd seen before on more than one occasion (not that I've sat right through it more than once, I hasten to add - I do have some standards, if not very many.)

What I would like to know though is this: is it just me or  does this happen to anyone else - I mean not just with that particular episode of DCI Banks, but with all sorts of different television series; and not just police things but comedies and documentaries and other stuff as well? It does not matter where I am in the world, (as long as they have television), I will turn on a television set and the only episode of Silent Witness or I Love  Lucy or Attenborough's Africa (or the DCI Banks thing, whatever it is really called) that I am ever going to be allowed to see will swim up out of the screen's darkness, and I will think, " Not that one again," and turn the thing straight off (except the I Love Lucy one, of course).

Sometimes though I wonder if I shouldn't turn off but should instead watch each of these programmes very, very carefully. Perhaps collectively they contain an important message from the universe that I am meant to pay close attention to.

But of course that is a completely deranged way of thinking. The universe does not send signals to individuals, and certainly not through the medium of mediocre TV programmes.

Or does it?

5 comments:

  1. I don't watch much TV, but I believe that at least once at the movies I have said to my wife, "Hey, haven't we seen this before?" I wish I could remember what the movie was: but had it been more memorable, either we'd have skipped it or we'd have seen it on purpose.

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    1. The moment in the screening that you asked your that wife is probably the moment that my husband usually dozes off

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    2. "your wife that" I meant

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  2. Happens to me all of the time. I think I will start looking for winning lottery numbers buried in the show...

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    1. If it is that I Love Lucy episode, I could happily watch it - or most things with her in it - several times more. She was genuinely comic, her face could make you laugh all on its own

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