Crap TV

I made the mistake the other night of turning on the TV back at the flat.
After flicking through a dozen channels (which were all showing adverts on a loop) I came across the Spanish version of Strictly Come Dancing called Mira Quién Baila (Look who’s dancing). Obviously I’ve no idea who the Spanish celebs are, but it didn't matter as I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the professionals and the amateurs! Not because the amateurs were so good, but because the whole thing was so crap! This may surprise some people now but believe it or not, I’m no Angela Rippon (although I was once mistaken for Rosemary Ford), so I’m not in a position to criticise anyone’s ballroom performance, but these people were all seriously rubbish! Once they'd done their little turns, the panel of experts (one of which was a guy who must’ve weighed at least 30 stone, so I’ve no idea what qualified him to give an opinion) gave their views as normal, but then it all went really strange. The female presenter was passed a box of chocolates from off screen, which she opened and started to coo over as if the Milk Tray Man had just burst in, and then some other people came on to pass more chocolates around the audience. I then noticed that the word “publicidad” had popped up in the corner of the screen, so figured this must be how programs are financed in Spain – by blatant plugging of random products in the middle of programs! (If this catches on in England, we'll no doubt have Bruce Forsyth plugging Tena Ladys!!) Suddenly, the reason for the 30 stone panel-member became clear (obviously, he’d been doing this program a long time and eaten a lot of chocolate!) Clearly, not much money must’ve been made on these particular chocolates because we then went to a proper break (presumably to bring in some serious advertising revenue), so I went to the toilet, casually made a brew and sat down and waited for the program to come back on. And waited… And waited… Few more adverts… Must be coming back soon… Few more adverts… (This has been going on for nearly 15 minutes now…) …still waiting. I thought maybe I’d sat on the remote and turned the channel over by accident, but no, this seems to be a fairly normal length ad break over here!

The TV over here really is awful to the point of being unwatchable. It’s frustrating but I have to at least try to watch a bit of TV each day to learn the language from it. I saw a talk show yesterday that was saying how something like 87% of all motoring offences in Spain are committed by men. The audience were nearly all women so there was loads of cheering, until the presenter said that the other 13% have all been committed by just one woman! (I’m sure that’s not realistically possible so maybe I miss heard the percentages, but it definitely wasn’t far off those figures). They then brought out this little old lady called Rosario who was in her late 60’s at least and looked like all she was missing was her mop and bucket, who is apparently the cause of this crimewave. The presenter then read out some of the highlights of her driving record and she just nodded and agreed with them all!! I lost the plot of what was going on after this, but they then took a “surprise” call from (I think) Rosario’s son who confessed that the offences where all his and that his mother was taking the blame for him to save his skin! Mental!!

Then of course, there's the Soap Operas (Telenovelas). If you thought Eldorado and Crossroads were bad, wait until you see these things! The highlight of the one I watched was a scene where an actor with a heavy moustache walked on, clearly tripped up quite severely, and then carried on with his lines as if nothing had happened!! The acting is truly awful but no-one seems to mind at all and it's all part of the fun. Presumably, they’re under a tight budget and only have limited time to churn out each episode, so quality has long since been forgotten!

Right, I'm off now to find out if Manuela's second cousin twice removed really is pregnant by the local Paella shop owners son!!!