PASSAGE 1 – Questions 1-10
TV REVIEW
Lucy Chang tells you what’s new (and not so new!) on your screens this summer.
I always look forward to this time of year, and I’m always disappointed! It’s the time of year when the TV channels tell us their plans for the summer and every year I tell myself that it might be different. It never is. Take SuperTV, for example. This channel, on our screens for five years now, broadcasts a depressing mix of game shows and music videos. So what do we find in the new schedule? I’m The One, a game show with holidays as prizes, and VJ-TV, yet another music video programme with brainless presenters. They’re also planning to repeat the dreadful chat show Star Quality, which is about as entertaining as watching grass grow. Why can’t they come up with new ideas?
Channel 9 does a little better. Now that Train Driver has finished, they’ve decided to replace it with Staff Room, a reality show that follows teachers around all day. It should be the hit of the summer, giving us an idea of what really goes on when the lesson is over. Who doesn’t want to see and hear what teachers say about their students at the end of the school day? Great stuff! Together with Life in Aylesford Street, the soap opera that everyone’s talking about, it looks like Channel 9 could be the channel to watch this summer.
Over on BTV1, Max Read is back with Joke-a-Cola, the comedy show. The first series was slightly amusing, the second hilarious. Let’s wait and see what the third series is like. Comedy is difficult to get right, but it ought to be great. I wish I could say the same about the sitcom, Oh! Those Kids! It’s enough to look at the expressions on the faces of the cast! It’s obvious they know it’s rubbish and the script is just so badly written! Oh! Those writers!
The programme makers must think we’ll watch anything. That’s just not true. People might have hundreds of channels on their TV or might live near a cinema with a dozen screens. There is so much choice of entertainment these days - TV, the cinema, the theatre, even the internet that they have to work hard to keep their audience. What they should be doing is making new, exciting programmes. Where are the programmes that make people think they must stay in to watch them?
We have to ask ourselves what entertainment is. We have to think about what people do with their leisure time. Television has been popular for about 50-60 years but it might not be popular forever. More people are going to the cinema and theatre than ever before. More people are surfing the internet or playing computer games than ever before. If Oh! Those Kids! is all that the TV can offer, why should we watch it? With one or two exceptions, this summer’s programmes will make more people turn off than turn on.
