Good Telly

Ever since meeting B, I've been watching a lot more television shows. We recently got a flat screen TV for the living room to take advantage of our free cable, but we'd previously been watching lots of shows and films on our computers. Among many of the British shows B has introduced me to, Hustle is one we've been watching for the past few months. It's a top-notch series on BBC (and now on AMC) about a group of professional long-conners. Each episode is entertaining, creative, and full of surprise. I will admit that after watching a few seasons of it, you start to guess how the plot will unravel- usually it looks like all is lost for the group, but then you see that it was all originally planned this way, and then a happy ending. I've never been big into television, but I will say that BBC is a pretty great station. Top Gear, Doctor Who, Psychoville, you name it. Very fun stuff. The TV in Britain is different from ours here; they focus more on plot and substance and don't rely on distracting violence, sex, explosions, general gratuitousness to hook in their viewers. Which means shows that don't insult my intelligence and taste.

Not to say that all American television stinks. (I think most of it does though. I was flipping through the channels and landed on VH1, which I have not seen in a long while. They were showing an ad for a reality TV show, which I thought was a spoof on reality TV show ads because of the idiocy of the characters, but then it was a real ad. Nauseating.) We are also currently watching Hung and True Blood. I am more of a fan of the former, because it's a show with an interesting premise and quirky characters. It's sexually explicit because the main character is a divorced dad and high school basketball coach (aka big loser) turned amateur gigolo, but it never loses its humorous tone. True Blood seems more gimmicky to me, because about 20 things happen in each episode; there's a good deal of sexiness and drama sans logical plot. But it's still mildly interesting and the vampires are good-looking, so we keep watching.

Image source: BBC