Stop reading. Immediately. Or rather, bookmark this page, stop reading and then come back next week because there's a good bit at the end about Cheers. Apparently it's Turn Off TV Week, which I didn't know, because I haven't seen anybody mention it on the telly. Some people, I discover, are widening the remit of that, and not turning on the internet or reading blogs or anything, which is just a bit over the top, really, isn't it?
The always worth-reading James Donaghy of Aerial Telly argues convincingly against the Anti-TV lobby, while over on Mental Multivitamin, a case is made for watching television Even More.
Low Culture raises a small, quiet voice bidding farewell to the OC, and raises the idea that it's probably about bloody time too, as it hasn't really been that good since season one. Which is possibly why everyone else is being so quiet on the issue of its demise.
Low Culture also has happy news for all fans of reality television couples with their own spin off shows: Katie (Jordan) Price and Peter (Peter) Andre have sold their three series of thrilling celebrity-marriage-TV fun to E!, where it will all live under the banner Katie + Peter, and will, the channel hopes, pip NBC's new Beckham's Family show to the post. Or something.
Unreality TV had the news that Shilpa Shetty is returning to Big Brother. Not in the UK, or, in fact, India, but in Australia, where she will go into the non-celebrity house for an as yet unspecified amount of time. This would of course have been a completely pointless item were it not for a quote from the show's executive producer, Tim Toni, who added: "You have got to throw in a few hand grenades!"...
What, literally? Now THAT's an idea. When's Big Brother starting here, again?
As usual, if you're British and law-abiding, and in the mood for torturing yourself, there's always good matter on the US TV blogs, who are generally much more into the culture of recaps and episode commentary than we are yet over here (though we're working on that). South Dakota Dark has a good (and spoilerific) breakdown of what's currently going on in Ugly Betty and My Name is Earl. Hell, by the time I get to see either episode they're talking about, I'll have forgotten what they said. That's why television's great: who needs more than a 10 second memory anyway? What was I talking about? Cheers?
Yeah, Cheers. TV anachronism posts are always great, obviously, but they're somewhat better when they come from the people who actually made the TV shows in the first place. As a case in point, Ken Levine, a writer on such shows as MASH, Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons (and on and on the list goes), has been pointing out the points of - *ahem* - "creative license" in Cheers itself, and a bunch of other shows as well. Now, I'm not saying that no one has ever spotted these glaring loopholes, but for some reason it means more when they come out of the mouth of one of the creators. I suppose I've always imagined that I've discovered an unknown mistake, whereas in fact, they always knew that these things made no sense, but hid at the back of the room with their fingers crossed hoping not too many people would notice ...
