CRUELTEEVEE

One of the joys of living in this relatively new world (to us at least) of multi-channel television is when I discover something to enjoy that I would otherwise never have seen in the “three-and-a-half” channel world which I used to inhabit.

Now that we have the dazzling bombardment of eighteen channels from which to choose (I know – with all this TV they are really spoiling us) we are finally able to see the criminal delights of Channel Five without having to ask someone to tape them for us just as most of those shows are starting to get cancelled and the sheer (and subtitled) genius of all that “Nordic Noir” that once only BBC2 used to screen in the small hours, back in the days when it still cared to share such things.

Few of the other “new” channels provide all that much that is tempting to be perfectly honest with you, except for the “Plus Ones” (which I suppose should really be “minus ones” but that’s marketing for you...) which occasionally come in handy.

I will listen to the digital radio channels when I know that I’m not going to be moving away from a particular spot in the house for a while, usually when there’s a Test Match on 5LiveSportsXtra, but most of the other stations tend to be passed by as we click through the options on offer, as they only seem to show the kind of programming that I would have avoided anyway back in the days when there was no other choice but to switch it off and go and do something more interesting instead like… picking out a DVD to watch instead.

I’m nothing if not a total under-achiever…

However, it was through “E4” that we discovered the delights of “The Big Bang Theory” and it is to that “youth-oriented” station that we now usually turn for our evening comedy “fix” of old reruns and one or two at least half-decent American sitcoms. There’s a lot of bilge, too, but you can very quickly work out which those are from the previews or trailers which usually demonstrate the “acting” on offer (Here’s a tip – if the performers look like they’re doing a stand-up act in a comedy club rather than playing a scene - like, for example, in the awful looking show“2 Broke Girls” - it’s usually a bad sitcom aimed at the more undiscerning of teenagers...) and so they can be avoided.

Recently, however, those “previews” have been showing up a dark underbelly to the so-called “comedy” on offer as there seems to have been a recent trend towards comedy – specifically “sketch based” that I would only describe as downright cruel but which no doubt has its own youthful fans screaming with laughter at the easy laughs provided by the comedy of humiliation from people who have not yet learned that mocking others isn’t quite so enjoyable when it’s turned back on yourself. When some of those scenarios are out to shock or embarrass rather than amuse, then there’s truly something warped about them that only an immature mind could really enjoy. “Cardinal Burns”, I’m looking at you... or rather, I chose not to, based purely upon the ghastliness on display in your trailers...

The absolute nadir comes with the trails being run for some new “Pranks played on Celebrities” show that they are currently promoting. You know (and just to show that there’s nothing new under the sun), the sort of thing that Noel Edmonds used to do with his “Gotchas” and “Mr Blobby” character all those years ago. In the trails, one of those lesser-known faces who was once on a “Big Brother” series apparently (well, I didn’t know who he was, but that’s no barometer to his “celebrity”) is told that samples were taken back when he was on that show and he’s about to be introduced to a “clone” that was made of him.

Now, judging by the trailer, this chap is pretty obviously not the sharpest of tools, and whilst I’m sure that they had a “big laugh” about it all afterwards when the “prank” was revealed (and, as you may be aware, I’m very much of the opinion that some of the cruellest things are done to people in the pusuit of the so-called “big laugh”), for a few moments the poor man looks genuinely absolutely terrified. Far, far beyond what anyone who is a decent human being might consider “acceptable” levels (zero, according to me at least, but I accept that people’s opinions on this may vary), and it really shouldn’t be tolerated in a reasonable, civilised society to be allowed to frighten or mock the more gullible or, dare I say it, “stupid” ones. Otherwise the days of people paying to mock the afflicted in the real life Victorian “Bedlam” might one day be deemed “acceptable” to return again too, even though I like to think that culturally we’ve grown beyond such things…

Now you could argue that all of those “Z-List” celebrities humiliating and embarrassing themselves and who are prepared to do anything just to be on TV and stay in the spotlight just a little bit longer deserve everything that they get, but it’s a fine line and probably isn’t one that we should knowingly cross without taking a long hard look at ourselves.

I think I must be getting old.

Actually, I KNOW that I’m getting old, and that I’m certainly outside the target demographic, but that’s rather beside the point, and, if we don’t draw a line in the sand and explain why it is that we find such cruelty morally unacceptable, then all of us remain just as guilty as the perpetrators of such “amusements”, and it only encourages them to try even harder to “shock” us, and who knows where that would end…?