Monday Mumbling: There’s Retro and There’s Yuk

 

Last night the missus was glued to the TV screen for an hour and a bit watching A Hard Day’s Night.

The Beatles first foray into movies and it was excellent… in 1964. Last night it was cringeworthy. It demonstrated that they were fine, revolutionary musicians and composers in their day, but they were not actors.

There was a clutch of these films during the mid-sixties. HDN was followed by Help in which the acting had improved marginally, the appalling Ferry Cross the Mersey, and the slightly better Catch Us If You Can. The latter starred the Dave Clark Five and Clark had been a stuntman, which made him slightly more comfortable in front of the cameras.

Naturally, these movies were not designed a Cannes FF fodder. They were more like marketing efforts, aimed at the already astronomical sales of the musicians.

However, I digress. My Monday moan is more to do with TV than sixties music movies. Her Indoors paid the thick end of £800 for our TV set and it sits in the corner doing nothing most of the time. And when you do want it to do something, what do you get?

Having suffered HDN, last night, I turn to today’s TV and it is so bleak it reminds me of every post-apocalyptic book I’ve ever read. Back when HDN first hit the cinema we had only two channels here in Great Britain, but at least they carried entertainment. Now we have hundreds, and I cannot see one single programme worth watching.

Prize of the night must surely go to ITV4 who are showing Alias Smith & Jones. This series ran from 1971-1973 and it was never particularly good then. What the hell possessed the people at ITV to re-run it?

I know. It was cheap.

If that’s the best anyone can offer, it may be time to check on the birth rate to see if it’s going up.

All I can say is, I’ll be exercising my favourite switch tonight. It’s called ‘ON/OFF’ and there are no prizes for guessing which option I’m taking.