‘Give me the remote. You’ve made me miss Mythbusters, you young expletive.’
‘In a minute.’
‘You are flicking between hip-hop hoes and the ninth repeat of Seinfeld. Come on, be fair.’
‘Well, what about the Osbournes marathon on MTV?’
‘Only if you don’t flick to Family Guy in the ads.’
‘You’re such a TV nazi, Mum.’
There just isn’t enough angst in modern domestics. Aeschylus would have known how to put it. Dissension in the home was his thing. How might he have framed such conflict?
Enter Clytemnestra, mightily fed up.
Clytemnestra: Orestes, by the Fates, where is the Zeus-damn remote?
Orestes: Chill out, Mum. I’m watching South Park.
Clytem: Not that crypto-fascist neo-con misogynistic bullshit again! By Hera, it must be the 17th repeat. And you’ve been swigging milk from the amphora again instead of using a goblet.
Orest: Aw, Mum, don’t keep going on and on.
Clytem: Just wait till your father gets home. It’s nearly time for Oprah. And have you been pinching my fags again?
Enter Agamemnon, pursued by a Fury.
Agamemnon: Gimme that remote, oh son of my loins. I want to watch The Footy Show.
Chorus: Oh rash words, Agamemnon! The house of Atreus needeth not footy, but Oprah, and possibly even Dr Phil in such perilous times. Restore to thy spouse her rightful remote for she doth get right narky about it.
Clytem: Shut up you lot. Oi, Fury—hand me that axe.
Tastes differ: ask anyone you know what their favourite TV program is, and you will probably strain the relationship. No, you say, scandalised. You’re not telling me you actually watch The Apprentice? Well, says your ex-friend, you did watch Big Br—
I know, I know. Gawd, do I ever have to live that one down! But surely there has to be a bottom line, a measure of quality that goes beyond brutal self-interest and solipsism. What have you really got in common with someone who prefers The Don Lane Show to Four Corners and scores Graham Kennedy’s obscure, forgotten Coast to Coast higher than Media Watch? These were the measured judgments of the pundits at Nine who made a league table of Australia’s ‘best 50 programs’ over the 50 years that TV has been in Australia. And as they carefully pointed out, it was not the current Media Watch that gained their accolade.
No, indeed: they praised mightily the erudition of its past glories under Stuart Littlemore, that excellent pedant. With David Marr and Liz Jackson the program