English can be as tonal as Cantonese: think of the perfect fourth drop in ‘Mum’, as in ‘Mu-um!’ If you find perfect fourths hard to visualise (no, that can’t be right, can it, except for those wankers who claim that they can See Music Without Hallucinogenic Assistance, so perhaps it should be ‘auralise’) then auralise, visualise or just call to mind the start of that old song Born Free, add a baritone whinge, and you’ve got my son remonstrating with me about the telly.
‘Mu-um!’ he said the other day when I was arguing with the telly. ‘You certainly do know how to ruin a night’s viewing.’
‘But it’s so bloody predictable! These scripts have more flags than the Olympics. Talk about telegraphing punches ... ’
‘What’s a telegraph, anyway?’
‘Something obsolete these benighted days, like subversive satire and social justice and old-growth forests and ... ’
‘Aw Mu-um!’
It can’t be easy for him; he puts up with quite a bit of my grumbling. But there is much to grumble about at the moment. What a god-awful lot of vapid crap is on offer for our viewing displeasure right now. There are no nights now when I am incommunicado.
Remember bygone days when we had Fawlty Towers, or even Buffy? When Four Corners was edgy and dangerous and politicians trembled, as they damn well should? And even though you had to stay up late or tape things like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, they were still there. After Nine’s recent extraordinary attempt to axe the second half of The West Wing (as if they hadn’t punished its fans enough by scheduling it near midnight) you could be forgiven for thinking that there is a concerted attack on any remnants of good television. Luckily there was an outraged response from viewers and so they have reinstated it and, curiously, called Episode 13 the Series Première. Because, you see, when you say that a 22-episode program is finished at Episode 12 you have to find some way of making it look as though there is method in the madness. But the programming geniuses haven’t finished cutting old growth: they think to increase their nightly news ratings with the young by sacking Jim Waley. Have these clever strategists forgotten that baby boomers have the numbers and the money as well as the education (acquired when it was free) to appreciate quality in their entertainment and an