American attacks British TV!

[faceless]

Shriver attacks British television
By Jason Deans / Edinburgh 2007 05:00pm

Orange Prize-winning author Lionel Shriver has condemned British TV for patronising its audience and broadcasting an endless diet of property, weight loss and cruel gameshows. The best-selling writer behind We Need to Talk About Kevin said BBC1 and BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five were all guilty of underestimating viewers. Shriver, who won the Orange Prize in 2005, said the public "deserve better than How to Look Good Naked and How Clean Is Your House?".

The American-born author of eight novels also said programmes had deteriorated dramatically since she moved to Britain 20 years ago. Shriver, 50, condemned gameshows that "create cruelty and humiliation", endless "reruns of Friends", "weight loss" programmes, a "lunatic profusion of British property shows" and "the worst of American exports". She added of the BBC: "I really resent paying my money for nothing but property shows that you don't want to watch."

Speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Shriver said: "It used to be that the contrast between engaging British television and the trash on American TV was shocking. Now the similarity is shocking. The biggest mistake contemporary television makes is to patronise the viewers. Your viewers are smarter, more sophisticated, and more hungry for real information than you might think." Shriver said British news programmes were "streets ahead of their American counterparts" which air more pharmaceutical adverts than current affairs.

But British TV was guilty of turning to the US for inspiration. New and challenging programmes had been sacrificed for "bloated sagas" on Paris Hilton's jail sentence, OJ Simpson's and Michael Jackson's trial, and Princess Diana's death. Citing a raft of programmes and documentaries on the Princess which have been broadcast since her death, she said Diana's death "has been a television crutch". "In order to make it a good story insinuations have been made for which there is little evidence" with "far-fetched conspiracy theories". "Popular princess dies in car crash. It's a sad story. But as an entire plot for a documentary or film I wouldn't give 10 pence for it."

Of coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, she added: "Girl disappears, the end, is once again a sad story in real life but as fiction it's a lousy story. We need a villain. We must damn this poor man (Robert Murat, the only suspect in the case) for having a basement and a four-year-old daughter. When you are a fiction writer you recognise these as very useful. You plant them in a book perhaps as red herrings. ... That's all very well to do in a book but this is real life. This poor man has had his life ruined. His reputation will never be the same. A cloud of suspicion will always hang over him."

Shriver called for "restraint", saying saturation coverage of the Virginia Tech and Columbine killings could spark "copycat crimes" by other misunderstood kids. The author added she was now unable "to find anything that merits turning on the set" and that the main channels were now constantly copying each other. She said: "TV in this country seems to have moved downstairs. When I was raised in the US I was brought up to revere British TV. I long associated British TV with quality. I have lived in the UK for 20 years and during that time I have seen that quality deteriorate."

She dismissed the notion that if people did not like what was on TV they would switch off, saying: "People like to be up-to-date to keep up with the national conversation. To a point they will want what you make them want. People watch what's on TV. Ultimately producers and executives have the power if you look at the schedule you can't change that. I do embrace TV as entertainment as much as the next person. It's not necessary for all TV to be edifying, educational and worthy. We need more enlightened entertainment."

We Need to Talk About Kevin was highly acclaimed for its depiction of the relationship between a career mother and her disturbingly cruel son and won the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. Shriver, born in North Carolina, is also the author of The Female of the Species, Ordinary Decent Criminal, A Perfectly Good Family and Game Control.

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I reckon this woman (called Lionel?) would be great in the Big Brother house... (that's post-ironic sarcasm, or something equally smart)

She does have a point though.

[6ULDV8]

I agree Faceless, she does have a reasonable point...

One of the biggest things I miss about the UK is / was the quality TV shows.
But things have changed in a huge way, look at the quality of shows, the variety of them in the 60's & 70's, things were not too shabby in the 80's & 90's (what I can recall up to 94)...
Things seem to have started to decline in the very late 90's, less 'family entertainment' & more reality & help style shows thinly disguised as entertainment.

It's the same on both sides of the pond, just those of us with several hundred chnls can almost avoid this stuff...

Even BBC America which is linked to several other stations / networks & also sells programing to PBS (Public commercial free TV & the reason why East enders isn't shown on PBS any more) has started to show a good 50 - 60% of the garbage that this woman has talked about.
Sometimes the percentage is higher.
BBC America isn't all BBC programing either, a small fraction of the shows are indeed BBC, the rest are ITV / CHN 4 & indie' shows.

BBC America alone from 9 am - 5pm is littered with: Everything must go, the orange geezer at auctions, cash in the attick, how clean is your house.
(They stopped doing a 3 hour block of Naked chef & other cooking shows 2 weeks ago).
The trend up to Febuary was to show cash in the attick, the orange geezer, trinny & suzane & two shows about buying / selling houses in the UK.

These shows, most of them have no real place on USA TV, just as many US shows are just a waste of time on UK TV...
What use is a show about buying a multi million pound home in the UK to somebody who lives in a trailer park in the usa? (or anywhere in the usa...)
UK & USA fashion is sooooooooo far apart they are virtualy in dif' solar systems, so why show make overs like Trinny & Co?

I am not putting UK TV down, a lot of good stuff is still bashed out, but you have to sift through so much crap to find it nowdays.

It's possible that the reason for all this could be the 'Extra' TV stations (UK ones), 90% plus great stuff when there were just BBC1, BBC2 & ITV...
80% after Chn 4 came along...
It could be a case of the monies & the writers just being spread too thin between the chns & amongst the extra hours of programing that has to be produced.

More later perhaps.

[faceless]

I rarely watch any of those lifestyle shows, though the occasional edition of Cash in the Attic isn't too bad, but her comparison with 20 years ago is a bit off the mark, especially regarding daytime tv. Back then, all there was was Pebble Mill etc...

[SpursFan1902]

It is also unfortunate that this type of programming has become equally popular in the US. We just "Americanize" all of the British reality shows, which is really stupid because the first "reality" type show that I can remember was Real World which was done by ( and is still done by) MTV, so we started the crap!! I didn't watch much TV while in England, but I what I did see was Big Brother and Location, Location, Location. LLL was interesting because it gave me an idea of what housing costs are, but BB was just trash through and through.

[6ULDV8]

[SpursFan1902]

[6ULDV8]

There were several 'fly on the wall' doco's (TV programes) back in the 60's as I mentioned...

To enlighten "SPURS"..
Fly on the wall = a style of filming where the people (with any luck) forget the cameras are present.
Thus being the first of the reality TV type shows.

I forget the name of the first show, certainly made mid 60's (or earlier) & it was a long look at a working class family.

[SpursFan1902]

Aha, now I see. I thought fly on the wall was the name of the show. My bad... Since it is of a different generation, those sound like they might be interesting. Sort of like that 7 Up series, although the kids in that knew they were on film. I watched that all the way thru and found it very addictive. I am glad I could watch them one after another and not have to wait 7 years for each installment.

[TheCaptain]

My favourite TV channel is Couchtripper, it has very little trash, well, apart from my comments, it has none.

I sometimes watch Match Of The Day on Mininova, and most of the West Ham games live on Sopcast (when I'm not in the pub).

All of those other channels are rubbish.

My compliments,

TheCaptain.