Have you got Sky? John, er, I have.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where Day of the Triffids (the dodgy B-movie, not the rather excellent BBC version) is the best thing on, don’t despair! Take a magical mystery tour up through the channel numbers and you’ll find something rather wonderful.

Speed past the shopping channels (how can there be sufficient mugs in the world to keep them all in business?!), don’t stop as you accelerate past Sky Box Office, but come to a sharp halt before you get to “Red Hot Viewers Wives” (seriously - I put it on by accident once and will never ever make that mistake again). Here in this forbidden realm you will find international channels from around the world. Witness a mad Brazilian World’s Wildest Police Chases-style programme that doesn’t try to dress everything up with moral messages, just gets straight to the point - loads of overturned cars trailing sparks in slow motion! Or the various Chinese channels where I once saw some kind of stunt dog doing some kind of crazy tightrope walk. And Al-Jazeera.

Far and away the best of the bunch though are the Indian channels showing wall-to-wall Asian drama. Now these are intense - I don’t mean the stories are compelling or the acting is good, just that everything is a huge event. Picking up a bottle is greeted with a blast of melodramatic music and overacting that would make the cast of Blake’s 7 blush. And when some woman opens a present that turns out to be a BOMB!!!!!!! - well, it’s all a bit of an anticlimax really. When stepping out of a door is treated as a deep and significant watershed moment, how can getting blown up possibly top it?!

British TV is mild by comparison.

I do enjoy listening to the radio, and talk radio in particular! Sadly the ’spoof’ talk radio stations in the latest GTA games are sometimes deadly accurate - I particularly enjoyed Chatterbox on GTA3, because it apes my favourite talk radio genre of all - the classic phone-in! Whether it’s Late Night North (local radio for local people - er, except it was syndicated across the whole North of England) or Jeremy Vine, they seem to attract their fair share of nutters phoning in, and amusement is had by all!

Jeremy Vine is always good for a laugh, partly because of the unusual format - “yes thanks for that harrowing tale of drug addiction and incest - and now, Ian Dury and the Blockheads” - but mostly because Jeremy likes nothing better than the indulge the odd nutter. I paraphrase from an exchange yesterday, discussing this…

Sweet Old Lady: If a young burglar came into my house, I’d handcuff him to the bed - top and bottom…
Jeremy: Er OK!
SOL: …strip off all his clothes…
J: Interesting!
SOL: And then pour cold water over him all night.
J: Are you getting excited thinking about this?
SOL: What do you mean?! Anyway, when I’d finished, I’d take some hot tar and drip it all over his chest for a bit. Then I’d throw him out of the house.
J: Hmm, I think we should take some legal advice on this one!
SOL: I don’t mean throw him out of the window or anything! Just the door…

Priceless! ; Especially as it was the first caller of the day. :~

Imagine you had a time machine - you could journey back in time and watch all the TV you’ve been missing! All right, so perhaps it’s not the most obvious use for time travel, but at least you’d stand less chance of accidentally stopping your parents from meeting if you were slumped in front of the telly, immobile and caked in your own filth. Or perhaps just the first thing there.

Some things you probably missed from the last few weeks:

• Jerry Springer the Opera - All right, so the fact it had to be all controversial to be stand a chance of being screened on BBC2 is a shame, but that’s a discussion for another time! That the BBC screened it at all when faced with a reported 40,000 complaints impressed me, though the opera itself really didn’t. Seeing a fat nappy-clad Jesus with a scatological fixation say he was bit gay probably riled some people up though, so that’s a bonus. :-*
• The Power of Nightmares - This was repeated again. You didn’t miss it again did you?! One of the better documentaries… ever! Even though a lot of the material was already familiar to me, this was thought-provoking stuff.
• Fahrenheit 9/11 - Nuff said. Pleased to see this on TV already. The Web chat afterwards crashed horribly, which is always a good sign for a programme’s popularity. (And/or Channel 4’s ineptitude.)
• Anatomy for Beginners - Man! Dead people being dissected on TV? Gross! And you’d think “ban this sick filth!” would be the next cry, but you’d be wrong. Yes, 40,000 people complain about an opera where the Satan tells Jesus to f- off about 300 times, but dead people being cut open on TV passes unnoticed! Anyway, I started watching to be grossed out, but stayed because it was so… incredibly… interesting! Trust me to miss all the good episodes and get the one with willies being sliced and diced, though. :~

Yes that was ‘what you missed on TV, serious version’. Tune in next time I can be bothered doing one for all the latest news on Celebrity Big Brother or whatever other shite is on at the time.

Channel 4’s cunning and insidious plan is evidently to force me to watch television for the entire summer. Sadly, I think their foul scheme is going to work.

Yes, top satellite channel E4 is screening the first episode of the fifth season of The Sopranos tonight, which, despite becoming more of a soap opera and rather less of the incredibly stylish drama it was in its earlier incarnations, is still one of the best things on TV today. Then on Thursday, they bum me in the gob with the new series of Six Feet Under, which despite what some misguided people may say, is the best thing on TV at the moment - bar none! What will happen to poor Nate? Do I care? Sadly, thanks to SFU’s mastery of slow-burning plot and character development, yes I do. I’m not (too) ashamed to admit that the finales of each series so far have really depressed me. :~

Possibly in a merciful attempt to give me some spare time away from the goggle-box, E4 have thankfully abandoned their absolutely terrible policy of screening two episodes ‘back-to-back’. Yes, that great satellite channel institution, which forces you, in your weakened state, unwilling to submit to another hour of the same programme, to bust out the videotape. Then guess what! You forget about it for a week and have to record the next two episodes to avoid viewing them out of order! Before you know it you’ve got a pile of tapes the size of the Eiffel Tower waiting for you and you record over them in a rage, regretting it immediately. :~

The above may or may not describe my Blake’s 7 experience. :~