211: Time Team and Songs of Praise

Is there a more boring programme than Time Team?  I used to enjoy watching it on a Sunday afternoon, but watching it now for a matter of minutes on a Saturday afternoon, it reaches boredom point in only three beats and a breath.  Perhaps there is a natural tolerance for tedium on a Sunday that doesn’t exist on other days.  The big shaggy-haired wurzel in the hat has just summed up the entire programme with the proud statement, “I spend my entire life digging holes and finding nothing.”  Tony Robinson recons this isn’t always the case: “Finally we’ve done what we always threatened; after 160 programmes we’ve found absolutely nothing.”  Call me when you find a vast unknown underground maze of catacombs and burial chambers populated with alien remains and ancient black magic paraphernalia.  I want inter-dimensional portals and deadly booby traps, not more broken pots and barbed-wire.

Sunday is a day of inoffensive and unchallenging religious programming that would not be tolerated on any other day; The Big Questions and Songs of Praise, not to mention the never-ending cycle of Antiques Roadshow.  And apparently there is a sort-of comedy called My Family.  No society worth its name would tolerate this kind of shite on any day other than Sunday.  If we were forced to tune in to the unenthused drones of the faithful singing their praise on a Friday evening we would raise up en masse to tear down the last remaining edifices of this so called civilisation.  It’s bad enough when a mass sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics takes over the television, but imagine if every couple of years the whole country and all the media became obsessed with singing hymns.  Charlie Brooker highlighted the ridiculousness of the World Cup by imagining a world where the entire country periodically becomes obsessed with country music.

It’s possible that there might be other things on telly on a Sunday, but I can’t imagine a way I could discover this obscure knowledge and to be honest I cannot be arsed putting in the effort.  This is unknowable without the most perfunctory spot of research, and shall remain unknown.  Sunday is antiques and Anglicans; and if it’s any different I don’t want to know about it.  I don’t like it, but it’s tradition, and who am I to change things or open my eyes.  What am I really talking about, I wonder?  Durn’t nuh.  Anyway it’s not Sunday today so what am I even going on about?  I miss Time Team.

Anyway what was I talking about.