Ratings Winners
The ratings are starting up and the new shows are imminent. The Winter Olympics will dominate Channel Nine but, since we’re a giant desert island and only the wealthy get to go to the snow, will we really be watching a handful of Aussie rich kids sliding around on frozen rain? Although your reviewer hasn’t been sent any previews (otherwise, the television stations would know where I live), with the benefit of seeing the trends in TV over my many years of viewing, I can let you know, without ever touching the remote, what’s on the immediate horizon.
There will be more new digital channels to satisfy every human interest, even if you aren’t interested. There’s the ‘Leftover Sports’ channel, a twenty-four-hour one dedicated to bringing to the viewer sports so obscure, that even the contestants won’t know the rules of hybrid ones like Contact Billiards, Ninja Tennis and Stiletto Knitting. The ‘What’s This Button Do?’ channel will present programs about how to use the television remote control, and a new channel that starts next year will tell viewers where to find it.
Reality programs will dominate our screens, as they are so cheap to make, and who can resist watching ordinary people doing ordinary things on an ordinary show? The hit reality program will be The Reality Show, which will be about the people who make reality shows. Watch as the crew falls asleep with boredom, the director fights to get the teabagging episode to air, and then see the host read from an actual autocue.
Australian teenagers will be addicted to a reality show that follows the day-to-day life of lazy Australian kids, Australian Idle. Cooking shows will still be the flavour of the year, but the big one will be Celebrity Roast. Who could resist watching Bert Newton baked at 180 degrees Celsius with an apple in his mouth, along with a side order of flambéed Hamish and Andy, and Sophie Monk presented on a delicate bed of rice?
Comedy is a ratings winner, but paying writers is an expense and a headache that the television stations can do without. Look no further than the flamboyant new comedy program called Relatively Funny, which will present classic comedy sketches performed by distant relatives of the original performers, to hilarious canned laughter. Watch open-mouthed as Michael Palin’s third cousin on his wife’s side and John Cleese’s aunty perform the parrot sketch, or Rowan Atkinson’s nephew performs as Mr Bean There. Two and a Half Men will be back, but the boy is now so old that the show is called Two Men and Another Man.
Crime pays on television, so the new CSI franchise, catering to the youth market, will be CSI: Crèche, where tantrum-throwing scientifically oriented toddlers will cut up corpses while forgetting to wash their hands. Finally, don’t miss the impossibly handsome cops, with not very annoying character traits, dazzling you with their logic and rippling biceps in Acronym: No-one Knows What They Stand For.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
Back
