Culture Shock: British Telly

I’ve been living for a month without DVR service, and I hate it. I feel like I've been catapulted back in time to the year 1996 via some sort of nefarious wormhole. Remember 1996? Hardly anyone over the age of 20 knew how to use email, laptop computers were something you'd see in a sci-fi film, and cell phones were the size of bricks.

I can't go back there. I just can't.

Back in my previous life in Colorado, I'd occasionally talk to someone that didn't have a DVR and claimed not to like tv. On the surface, I might pretend to commiserate with them. "Oh, yes. TV. Hardly watch it myself. Mind-numbing stuff. Kills your brain." Silently, though, I'd pity them. I'd think.... Of course you don't like tv. You don't have a DVR! Without the godlike power to pause live tv and skip through commercials, what’s the point?

I know this is a very uncool thing to say, but I actually love tv. I love sitting down at the end of the day and plowing through an episode of America's Next Top Model, or Glee, or whatever sort of semi-trashy, mindless show I’ve recorded.

Matt, he likes highbrow documentaries and science shows. Not me. I love campy junk. A totally predictable procedural drama like Castle? Yes, please! Project Runway? Bring it on!

But, the pleasure that tv gives me really only works through a DVR. If I have to sit on the couch and flip channels until something mildly tolerable comes on, only to then have to sit and wait through a dozen awful commercials before the show I could barely tolerate in the first place comes back on the screen…. Well, it pretty much kills all of the fun of watching for me.

Since watching television without a DVR feels like taking a step backwards to the tehnology of 1996, it seems appropriate somehow that the shows being aired on British television are also frozen in time. In total, we have about twenty channels that we can access through our tv. No exaggeration, at any time during the day I can turn on the television and find an episode of Friends on the air. If that doesn't suit your fancy, then flip to another channel where reruns of Top Gear play in an endless loop. After that, guaranteed, will be an old episode of CSI: Las Vegas.

In the evenings, Matt and I will sometimes sit in the living room and before turning on the tv one one of us will say to the other, "So... What'll it be? Top Gear, or Friends?" Because other than commercials, that's pretty much it. The free channels that we currently get via antennae don't give us any first-run American shows, or any British shows that seem remotely watchable. (Ok, other than documentaries. Matt watched a two-hour documentary on bread the other day that he's still excited about.)

But, we're on the road to modernization. I've called a cable company, and we're going to get cable and a DVR service installed on Monday. Personally, I can't wait. The new season of Glee has already started, and I missed Sue Sylvester's shot-by-shot remake of Madonna's "Vogue." I've got to get with the times!