TV Eats Itself

Way off topic warning. But remember, if you want pure, unadulterated Sideburn motorcycle coverage, you simply need to buy the magazine. You keep buying it, we'll keep making it. Pick a cover from those on the side that catches your eye and fill your boots.

So, back in the early-2000s, acerbic newspaper columnist, turned TV series writer, Charlie Brooker (a big favourite of mine) wrote a website called TV Go Home. It was a fictional TV listings magazine (like Radio Times or TV Times) but all the shows were preposterous often cynical mash-ups reflecting the increasingly desperate formats of shows filling up the expanded UK schedules (until the 1982, the UK only had three TV channels, now we have nearly 500).

TV Go Home's short descriptions were, and remain, hilarious, but now British shows are making TV Go Home seem like the minutes of a sober brainstorming session in a TV production company. Example 1:

Singing in the Rainforest
Send seminal Madchester band to the Panama rainforest to perform in the baking sun and see how the local tribe react.

For real.

I didn't see the programme, but it looks oddly heartwarming from this trailer and I've always liked the Mondays. G