20 Oct
2025
20 Oct
'25
6:30 p.m.
On Mon, 20 Oct 2025, Doc Shipley via cctalk wrote:
TL;DR: I like British TV better than the pablum we
make in the US, but I get
tired of it quickly.
I may not have been clear, but with some fabulous exceptions, British TV
tends to be so... paced, maybe? that it ends up feeling wrapped in cotton.
Much like barely-treated depression; hence the Prozac description.
I'm mostly deaf these days, so everything I watch is subtitled. The silver
lining is that getting used to Closed Captions opened up worldwide TV - it no
longer matters what the original language is as long as it's got titles. So
a few years ago I started a Cop Shows 'Round The World tour.
I also find that of the stuff that I like, a disproportionate amount is
British.
When my mother was losing her sight, she liked to watch Britcoms.
So, I got complete sets of DVDs of
As Time Goes By,
Black Adder,
Doc Martin,
Father Ted,
Fawly Towers,
Keeping Up Appearances,
One foot in the grave,
Waiting for God,
etc.,
in addition to my own
Blake's 7,
Dirk Gently,
Doctor Who (there are still some episodes that have never been found)
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy,
Red Dwarf,
Red Green (Canadian, NOT British)
Good Omens,
Secret Life Of Machines,
Torchwood,
the few movies made of Terry Pratchett's writings,
etc.
Like you, I have gone from HoH to functionally deaf, so I am completely
reliant on captiona/subtitles.
With enormous numbers of repetitions, and the kind help of a wonderful
friend, we MADE captions (,srt) for Hyperland (1992 (well before WWW), BBC
doc about what the internet would become, with Ted Nelson, Douglas Adams,
and Tom Baker)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
Russian (I include the old USSR satellites) TV is a pure, unpadded descent
into a hopeless trudge through hell. Any series that involves madness -
"Metod" if you can find it - is a whole other level of crazy.
I love it.