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.
