Remember the show "Connections" from the BBC and they would take some technology like a steam coal shovel and explain how that somehow resulted in a series of cause and affect conditions that made the moon landing possible. It was like an hour of being spoon fed all this fascinating material in depth.
TV content used to be more nutritious for your brain. Then somehow everything became just pure fried sugar devoid of any beneficial or meaningful content. Why does everything end up being reduced to the lowest effort schlock?
"you alright, man? My mum said you'd been feeling a bit down and could use a talk."
British character on US TV:
"Cor blimey, guvnor! Me mam gave us a right old bollockin' on that you'd bin down in the dumps and could use a jolly ole shot in the arm! Roger roger! Say no more!"
British TV has to tone it down because British people get offended and think that the characters are just cartoonish stereotypes. Their US portrayal is more accurate because they don't have to tone it down.
Yep, completely right we all talk like that all day and don't notice. That's why we notice it sounds weird when we see people speaking completely normally in US shows.
The bottom one only plays on sunday afternoons one episode after the other preceded by America's Funniest Home Videos reruns on ABC Family or w/e the channel name is now.
I havenât watched proper TV in 20 years so I honestly donât know whether this is actually happening in peoplesâ homes. The discovery merger lends too much credence to the possibility. Which reality show completed the enshitification of an already extremely enshitified service? Was it duck dynasty that set the trajectory for [current year]?
Non primetime television has probably been garbage for longer than it wasn't. Only difference is that some of the shows they play nonstop were considered good or at least good for background fodder. My mom, for instance, needs something like cable to have on in the background for noise because a streaming service or my hard drive full of shows and movies gives her choice paralysis but putting on reruns of Castle yet again is easy.
The Octopus Murders is quite good, but its also not a nature documentary.
I should note that my wife will binge "MerPeople" for hours at a time. But she got about fifteen minutes into Octopus Murders and threw up her hands upon discovering its mostly about SQL Databases.
Both these styles of documentary are on Disney+. We watched one called Crazy Predators Gone Wild! or whatever but the joke wore thin quite quick and we had to go back to one narrated by Charles Dance.
And ... is this also how other nations perceive British TV, like Brits do the USs TV?
(And in turn USA TV like an unfocused ferengi ad campaign that is absolutely 100% into selling whatever is on screen, regardless of facts or even if it needs selling at all, just bcs the selling itself, the up-in-your-face marketing attitude is expected or the program just isn't deemed serious bcs they obviously aren't trying enough?)
Im really saddened when really good (British too) documentaries use more and more fake sounds added in, just because (its cool, nice & pleasant even, but not the raw data I want to heart & learn how that actually sounds). Especially in cases where there is og sound to be heard. And they blend both interchangeably so it's even harder to tell.
Even worse are the semi-serious documentaries that have experts explain stuff, simplified but still accurate, then followed by some other 'for TV scientists' (not from that field) that retell the same thing, but with a few wild assumption added in and at least slightly imprecise (but no new information otherwise).
However, I also hugely sympathise with everyone involved, from field experts that researched & often documented the thing, down to someone writing the script just to stand helplessly and listen how someone else completely rewrites it 'to be more interesting'. And knowing that it has to be done this way to get the thing even produced and out to the public.
Kind of. At least it used to. When I was doing offshore rotation little over a decade ago, we had two news channels onboard. BBC vs CNN. I remember them having the exact same difference in style, and CNN annoyed the fuck out of me.
"Knock off the CGI, I just want to learn what's up with the Chilean miners, or what this new terrorist organization in the middle east is".
I had a discussion with a coworker about this during commercial break, where I argued that BBC had more actual substance, where he argued for CNNs ability to make it more entertaining. Guess the nationality of my coworker.
I swear, that TV show felt like a military recrutment tool. I know the US military has some influence in Hollywood, so I would not find it too shocking.
Also, targeting mainly men who watch a lot of TV and don't have much of a future or life would make a great demographic for military recruitment.