David Burke, Victoria

Having had a very bad back for a dozen long years, pushing sixty, there’s something to be said for slumping in the big comfy chair and behaving like a complete ‘couch cucumber’ in front of the boob tube.
    And there’s plenty of boobs too in a cleverly depicted cosmetic miasma that is designed to send one running to the bathroom mirror in a dyspeptic frenzy of self doubt. Where I ask, are all the ugly characters and street people that make Douglas and ‘Yeats’ a positive palimpsest of Joycean possibilities. Gone, banished to the upper channels or late night documentaries, most commercials are bland and horrific in Disney-like virtue, featuring wholesome North American princesses with perfect white teeth. I’m missing most of mine – my Hollywood career on permanent hold.

Having had a very bad back for a dozen long years, pushing sixty, there’s something to be said for slumping in the big comfy chair and behaving like a complete ‘couch cucumber’ in front of the boob tube.
    And there’s plenty of boobs too in a cleverly depicted cosmetic miasma that is designed to send one running to the bathroom mirror in a dyspeptic frenzy of self doubt. Where I ask, are all the ugly characters and street people that make Douglas and ‘Yeats’ a positive palimpsest of Joycean possibilities. Gone, banished to the upper channels or late night documentaries, most commercials are bland and horrific in Disney-like virtue, featuring wholesome North American princesses with perfect white teeth. I’m missing most of mine – my Hollywood career on permanent hold.
    The BBC is a nightmare of leaping Arabs and military hardware. When do these blokes go to the washroom I wonder. Hoarders is the essence of judgemental cruelty. Reducing overweight victims to tears time after time. Entertainment Tonight enjoins us to wallow and bask in stellar minutiae until the brain is reeling from trivia trauma as one follows celebs from rehab to prefab.
    Where are all the preposterous paparazzi in Cook Street Village when I’m arrested or perpetrate a papal faux pas involving precious civic property.
    Who sanctions all the nauseating simplistic cartoons in prime time when kids are in bed. The Comedy Channel is plain unfunny and the news is a depressing parade of public pederasty and domestic dispute.
    The religious shows are so predictable and when I surf with a degree of self importance, I’m always delighted when the History Channel shows a documentary on Medieval art or warfare and the intricate machinations of CSI give way for a second and fable wins out over forensics.
    For my personal tastes the Turner Classic black and whites sans commercials offer best value and a Korda epic with sumptuous production values and costumes transports me to a place where I forget personal grief and disappointment and Hollywood rightly delivers the goods in a way that is genuinely deserving of awe and respect.
    I highly recommend my personal favourite – That Hamilton Woman – with Laurence Olivier and wife Vivien Leigh fairly burning down the screen in a display of what I consider, rightly or wrongly, the best tandem screen acting of the 20^th century.
    If I ran television I would have a welfare network with street people providing the commercials and commentary and soap opera/comedies in the morning for the folk that lack two pfennigs to rub together and put an end to the ‘Martin Short end of the schtick’. George Orwell would approve.
    TV from the bottom on up would be a revelation of epic proportions compared to the number of movies that depict rich actors playing rich people for the benefit of those lucky luminaries at the top of the heap who have never been homeless or hungry for a week or committed to jail or the nuthouse. I prefer to watch real life when all is said and done. And it’s free at the Market on ‘Yeats’. See you there.