Back to Contents

ESSENTIAL VIEWING Two things guaranteed to get up my nose are the comments 'Essential viewing' and 'Enjoy' which you often see at the end of newspaper and magazine television previews. You've read the sort of thing - '....another fine episode of A Touch Of Frost with the customary bravura performance fron David Jason. Essential viewing'. Essential? Well it might be essential viewing to the television reviewer but it certainly isn't essential to me. I've seen A Touch Of Frost a couple of times and found it to be of poor quality, as predictable as it is boring, with stories that could be told in half-an-hour padded out with all manner of extraneous matter to spin them out to two hours. The only way that Frost could possibly be essential viewing for me would be if I wanted to be bored, and even then it wouldn't be essential since if I wanted to be bored there are literally dozens of other television programmes I could pick from.      'Enjoy' is if anything even more patronising. I was once told to 'enjoy' an episode of French and Saunders. I admit that some people must find this pair amusing, hilarious even, indeed even The Trouble finds them mildly diverting, but to me they are about as funny as walking to the North Pole with a nail in your shoe. I could no more enjoy an episode of French and Saunders than I could poke half a pound of butter up a porcupine's behind with a red hot needle; but if I could poke half a pound of butter up a porcupine's behind with a red hot needle I am sure I would enjoy the experience more than I would watching an episode of French and Saunders, and I wouldn't mind betting the porcupine would too. And if Jennifer Saunders were to poke half a pound of butter up Dawn French's behind I would enjoy that experience also, and might even laugh, although it would probably put me off toast for a week or two. But their usual fare leaves me totally cold. Eskimos with their haemorrhoids stuck to the ice would laugh more.     Who are these people who evidently value their own opinions so highly they imagine that just because they themselves take a shine to a particular programme and deem it 'Essential viewing', assume that everyone else will do likewise, and will 'Enjoy' it. As far as I am concerned the opposite is true, for I would be more likely to consider a television programme good enough to be judged 'essential viewing', and worthy of the inclusion of an 'Enjoy' at the end of the the preview, if it had been judged thus by someone who had demonstrated that they could hold down a job that demanded a little more intelligence than that required of a television programme previewer.      Enjoy.