Television the droog of the nation

If you ever find yourself quarrelling with a Russian about anything, you can point out that the television here is shit, briefly mention the BBC and, whatever follows, you have won a significant point. Unless you are arguing with an idiot, and if so then you really have only yourself to blame.

Anyway, it’s all shite: even the stuff that is nearly good is like regional television from Birmingham in 1973. This is largely because, whatever the byzantine ownership structures involving banks and oligarchs and the great and the good of Mother Russia, it’s all bad commercial TV, with the exception, that is of the black and white soviet intelligentsia world that is channel Kultura. That is the channel everyone mentions to defend Russian TV, but that nobody who has a life ever watches, and with a schedule made up of, concertos for tractor and orchestra, re-runs of Armenia’s greatest chess matches and 4 hour interviews with Byelorussian Pylon designers from 1957 who can blame them?

Besides, as neither Goebbels nor Goering ever actually said: “Ven I hear ze Vord Kultura, I reache vor meinen revolveren…Mutter.”

The rest of it is gilded shite, and it matters not how much gold, talent or expensive technology you throw at it, it is still shite. It is full of pretty people in bright clothes shouting at everything, like children’s TV gone psychotic on hallucinogens and bad liquor. And it’s all in Russian for god’s sake. The first thing to check in the “is it good television test”, as is well known, is: “Are the people speaking in English?” If the answer is no, then unless you are Danish, or a bored insomniac, you can move on to question 2: “Is it from the BBC or HBO?”

Personally I never made it to question 3: life is short and torrents exist, duh.

The Russians have news and quiz shows, just as everyone else does, the people who make it are like these people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVE6kdhANQ and the results are predictably shite.

The above views do not reflect those of the man who wrote them in any way. Please send all correspondence to the Guatemalan consulate in New Zealand. http://gt.embassyinformation.com/