How does already micron-thin televisual credibility shave yet another nanometre off its already translucent girth? Somehow they (whoever the mysterious 'they' may be) keep suggesting, and another 'they' keep approving, increasingly mind-numbing ways to do so. There's an episode of Come Dine With Me, a show which is already solely redeemed by a catty, knowing voice-over, due to air shortly in which all the contestants are former Big Brother 'winners'. This is TV turning in ever-decreasing circles, clamping its sucker-mouth onto its own belly, one already distended through lack of nourishment. How much more self-referential, how much more pointless, how much more banal is it going to get before it disappears up its own anus and, please, please, some quality TV appears to fill the resultant void?
Everybody who's tried to create a perpetual motion machine has failed - the law of diminishing returns always wins. TV is trying to feed off its own excrement and part of me hopes it gorges itself - with any luck it'll leave the landscape clearer for something interesting to follow on behind. Regrettably, this will doubtless result before that happens in "Come Dine With Celebrity Cash in the Big Brother Attic", or "X-Factor Flogs Talent", or some other monstrous hybrid.
One of these shows' 'concepts' has given me an idea, though. I believe there's one where people set their house up as an instant restaurant, produce food for visitors, and the visitors pay whatever they think the meal's worth. Would that we could do the same with the licence fee. "I've seen your offering for the past year, and frankly, it was shit. Bland, texturally disastrous, soggy, unimaginative, derivative and it left me feeling queasy. You get twenty quid, and nineteen of that was for the new Attenborough documentaries." That'd learn 'em. Unfortunately it would only give them the budget to make even more such tripe.
Thank whatever it is you swear by for books, DVDs and Radio 5Live Sport.
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