Light entertainment

[tobyaw]

I am growing increasingly intolerant of light entertainment. My leisure time is important to me, and I don’t want to waste it on inane television.

When there were limited choices on television — a handful of channels and no video-on-demand — one could accept that the viewing public wanted a shared experience in their television, and so light entertainment developed an influence that its content doesn’t justify. But now we are in a multi-channel world, with broadcast television becoming increasingly irrelevant, and with iPlayer and Netflix and iTunes letting us take control of our own choice of entertainment. We no longer have to wait for a television channel to give us a drama that we like, or a film by our favourite director. We can now have it all, and have it now.

This means that we can now make judgements of taste and quality on the programmes that we watch — we no longer have to watch light entertainment just because it is a cost-effective way of filling broadcast hours between scripted dramas. With all of the programming that I have immediately available to me, there is no reason to watch something that I consider a waste of my time. I enjoy television drama, the news, music, and Formula 1, but I would be happy never again to watch a chat show. I want to avoid anything involving celebrities, audience interaction, or “behind the scenes” access.

Sadly one of the compromises of married life is that the TV in our house will be showing Strictly Come Dancing every Saturday and Sunday night from September through to Christmas. I try to hide behind my iPad, ignore the inane onscreen chatter, and be glad that it is nothing like as bad as ITV’s Dancing on Ice. Ugh, now that is bad.

Comments

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Some of the older light entertainment had some merit, though I agree that modern stuff seems all bad (perhaps Sturgeon's Law applies and I'm just remembering the 10% good stuff). I think both the Two Ronnies and Morecombe and Wise had some real comedy talent (though like much sketch material some is good, some mediocre and some dire - even onty Python had sketches that were dire and just didn't work even at the time as well as stuff that dated very very quickly).
THen again I haven't watched any of this stuff since leaving the parental home. I used to have an enormous (for the time) collection of off-air video recordings of dramas and movies before I had a DVD player and that formed the basis of my viewing.
If you think UK Light Entertainment is bad, try Japanese. We don't watch it but sometimes it comes on after a recorded piece stops and it looks dire. It's an amazing adssault on the senses. The background sets and costumes are just a riot of colours and business. They often run local or overseas short factual pieces with the faces of the in-studio commentators in a small picture-in-picture, so you can see what emotions you're supposed to be feeling as you watch. Even without understanding the commentary very well, I can see it's just awful.

[tobyaw]

There are of course degrees of light entertainment, but I would consider scripted comedy sketch shows to be quite distinct from the bulk of light entertainment.

I'm not sure how depressing it is that light entertainment is a world-wide curse!