gone are the days

bah, humbug

well, here we are again. tradition dictates, look you see, that i try to capture the excitement of days gone past for this one special time of the year. i speak, of course, of the thrill that once was getting the bumper, super, massive edition of the Radio Times and/or the TV Times, featuring listings of all the goodies what were to be broadcast over Christmas and New Year. 

for the last few years i have put myself through this, and shared my plight with you. whined about it, if you like, and it is fair to say that i have, to be sure. my complaint has been both the lack of quality of these two big name magazines and, of course, the fact that no, the broadcasters have long since ceased to make festive television choices exciting or surprising. a particularly lower than usual low has been reached this year on both fronts. 

let this be said up front (right now), then. the television selections for Christmas, and indeed New Year, by the so-called "big" channels, is predominantly sh!t. there are one or two things of interest, but mostly they have gone mediocre, dreadful and/or dull. a partial (justified) excuse for this is, of course, the fact that for most of 2020 we have waged the invisible war on the new plague, making the creation of any new television stuff tricky and difficult, if not impossible. yet still what gets served up is disappointing. 

my first challenge, then, was coming to select exactly which TV guide i was to purchase for the festive season. usually this is a toss up between the two "big ones" mentioned earlier, namely Radio Times and TV Times. still i can recall, and long for, the excitement of the day in December every year when Mum walked in with both of them off of the paper shop. back then it was so that Radio Times only had BBC stuff whilst TV Times had only ITV and Channel 4, so you had to get both. unless you were really, really anti one of the channels, i suppose. or were content to just get daily TV listings out of the newspaper, which people bought in the 80s, or even just get the listings off of Ceefax or Oracle. 

as both of them magazines now list all channels going, there is simply no need to get both. well, you could do, i guess, if somehow it was so that each had worthwhile articles in them. i doubt that this is so, but to each their own. 

for the most part it has been that TV Times has won in the last few years, for it has been considerably cheaper. i have no idea why, but Radio Times seems to price itself in a range designed to attract only those who wish to look posh and wealthy buy purchasing it. this year, the Christmas edition of Radio Times is neither north nor south of £5, whereas TV Times was unexpectedly north of £4. it was so that i nearly splurged on the TV Times, but in the end i decided (and i feel wisely) with that sort of pricing, both of them could f*** right off. 

quite a few of these newer, more recent and discernibly (apparently) obsessed with soap opera tv guides seemed to have their Christmas edition on sale for a mere £1.40. of those options, i went with the one which is called What's On TV, for it was all shiny, and i think i even recognize one or two of the people on the cover of it. since i knew disappointment was surely going to be in the pages of whichever periodical i selected, it made sense to go cheap. 

surely, and most decidedly, the choices or selections put forward by the so-called "big" channels for this Christmas are simply dreadful. yes, there are one or two of the usual "specials" of shows that are loved and well known (whether you happen to like them or not), but around those fractured moments one finds very little of interest or ambition. '

too much (far too much) time is given over to people who for some reason broadcasters are quite determined to make a "thing" no matter how little appetite there is for such. by far the worst of this is just how much Richard f*****g Osman we are exposed to. yes, he is tall, yes, he is related to someone off of Suede and yes, he is good at reading stuff off of Google, but the man is a personality void. as in, if you are in a double act with Alexander Armstrong and you are the boring one, the world of entertainment is not for you. Alan Carr also gets far too much (as in any) airtime; i have no idea what the fixation is that programme makers have but you simply cannot drag talent out of someone if there is patently none there to fetch. 

above is BBC1's New Year's Eve line up. i have selected them as they seem to be the only channel what is doing something "live" for the big event, the farewell to a wretched year we shall all be delighted to see gone. unless you own shares in PPE stuff or toilet paper. it all starts off well enough with that Paddy McGuinness (no relation) bloke, but then drops off formidably. to say that Graham Norton's one trick thing is now stale is perhaps unfair, but it is a loaf of bread on the afternoon of two days after the best before date. bravely you use it, but you know satisfaction would be binning it, or feeding it to the ducks. 

worse comes after, of course. sure, they can't do the usual New Year's Eve concert thing. but, really? of all the musical acts all around the world, they squander taxed and threatened to get licence fee money on Alicia Keys doing something or other from LA? oh dear. the break at midnight for the chimes of Big Ben is also going to be amazingly depressing too, since squatter mayor of London has binned off the fireworks and that. 

no, i have not forgotten or neglected the classical Christmas days (roughly or ostensibly 24, 25 and 26) on the tele. it is just that there is not so much to say, really. once again, sadly, there is no repeat (that i could find) of Chas & Dave Christmas Cockney Knees Up 1981 on Channel 5. i think this is the second or third year in a row what they have denied me my annual pleasure of it. 

it is at least the case that Challenge TV values putting decent stuff on over the festive period. one really cannot go wrong on New Year's Eve with them, then. yes, that's 16 (sixteen) hours (or is it 14) of The Chase, followed by a very satisfactory 3 (three) hours of Bullseye. at least it had better be proper and correct Bullseye, featuring Jim Bowen, and not that horrid variation they did with some false prophet. 

really, really bad news is that ITV have jettisoned one of the greater traditions of Christmas television, which is to say no proper James Bond film on from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day (inclusive). nearest closest (and this is quite far away) is very late on the Eve, with the complete sh!t "spoof" 60s variation of Casino Royale is on. in the life i knew, Boxing Day television was all about watching Sir Roger Moore save the world and then doing a sex. only via my DVD collection shall this happen this year. 

on a more positive note, the radio is looking (well, sounding) good. Zoe Ball is on holiday for Christmas, as too is Steve Wright, but he seems to only work for 14 - 18 weeks of the year anyhow. a massive plus is that (oooh) Gary Davies (on your radio) is on a lot on Radio 2 over the festive period. quite a bit of that Rylan Clarke fellow, too. i have taken a shine to him, i have, to be sure. yes, when i first heard him i clocked he was hopeless, but have embraced that he is hopeless in a lovable, fun and thoroughly enjoyable way. further, the brilliant Nick Abbott appears to be on LBC every single night over the Christmas season. 

between the boys and their computer games and all them "streaming" services, i suspect it shall be so that little, if any, of the stuff being broadcast over the two week Christmas tv window will end up being watched. perhaps some Bullseye and The Chase, maybe the usual Big Fat Quiz Of The Year and in all likelihood Doctor Who, if we can work out where they have put it since they have shifted it from the usual, traditional Christmas Day slot. 

am i (should i make it that far) going to bother with the tv guide next Christmas? not sure. here i could say no, i don't think i will, but i will probably end up doing so. 

perhaps this is presumptuous of me, but i suspect the only help anything i have written here will be of to you is in telling you not to worry so much about buying a Christmas tv guide, and indeed to seek something other that television for entertainment over the period. unless, for some inexplicable reason, it is so that you are one of these thought not to exist people who quite likes Richard Osman and/or Alan Carr. if so, then you are in for a treat.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!