The times, they are a changing. Next time you throw a sicky, you'll need to sift through countless awful cable channels to find something to amuse you, in between sniffs of an Olbas-drenched hankie.
Long-standing daytime staples such as To Buy Or Not To Buy, Diagnosis: Murder and Murder She Wrote are being ditched by the BBC, in a move that's set to leave dedicated couch-potatoes thumbing powerlessly at their remote controls.
With university budgets being slashed by almost half a billion pounds in the next year, UK students are going to be under increasing pressure to make their grades. So the removal of popular time-wasters from the TV schedule can be seen as the BBC's contribution to the further education effort.
But it's hard to conceive of a world without Jessica Fletcher. The world's favourite octogenarian jinx has been acting as the unofficial Grim Reaper of Cabot Cove, since the show first aired in 1984.
Boasting an extended family that makes Donny Osmond look like Orphan Annie, Jessica has an uncanny knack of dropping in on blood relatives just as they find themselves accused of double murder. Thankfully, she's never happier then when finding a bludgeoned corpse in a locked room, it gives her something to sink her ceramic dentures into.
Although Murder She Wrote was officially cancelled in 1996, after 264 episodes and more murders than Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein combined, the show has been become something of a TV staple. Like the Six O'Clock news or the blonde test-card girl with a chalk-board.
Nonetheless, it's hard to picture daytime TV without Angela Lansbury tapping away at that Victorian typewriter, and carefully removing the index finger of each of her victims with a cigar-cutter, in order to taunt long-suffering Sheriff Tom Bosley. Shit, I might have just spoiled the twist ending of episode 264. Don't hate me for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment