A few years ago a work colleague, Norm, asked me if I watched The Price is Right. I said that I didn’t, but he told me to watch that night. I figured his wife was going to be on, and she was, she was the first contestant called. I figured he knew this because the program was pre-recorded, but in fact the next day he told me they were the parents of one of the show’s models, and it was teed up in advance that Norm’s wife would be called from the audience. Anyway, I complimented his wife on her acting skills because she pulled off a pin-point impersonation of someone caught completely by surprise.
Jonathan Andrews
1 month ago
I thought this very interesting. There is a conflict between producing entertainment aimed at “the lowest common denominator” and innocent, popular fun. There is the conflict between those who genuinely care about high standards and those who just want to dismiss the lowers orders as immature who need to be told what to think and do and you explain it nicely.
For what it’s worth, I think we are safety to be on the side of trusting people even if that sometimes means we get cheap and nasty telly. There’s still a lot of quality and sophisticated stuff. More importantly, I don’t trust those who want to make the judgements.
Douglas Redmayne
1 month ago
I remember dreary bores whom opposed high value prizes and the National lottery. Thankfully these bores are now mostly dead along eith the sort of deference that meant such moralisers were treated with the respect they didn’t deserve.
Richard Abbot
1 month ago
I remember this as if it were yesterday. I was like a portal had opened. No more Juliet Bravo or All Creatures Great and Small. This was fun! The possibilities were limitless!! (Or so it seemed at the time).
David Morley
1 month ago
Since then, what began as a force for social levelling has become a race to the bottom.
In other words the snooty people at the Telegraph and Guardian were prescient.
Also, can we not treat the working class as a bloc, who all bought into crass game shows and Thatcherism. They didn’t all. While plenty of the lower middle classes did.
Yes. It’s an odd kind of liberation though. A bit like our similar culinary liberation movement – no more oppressive healthy meals, just fat and sugar laden food that would once have been eaten only by children, and only occasionally.
David Morley
1 month ago
There does seem to be a kind of general rule of media (print, radio, film, tv, internet) that it is initially heralded as enlightenment for the masses, but ultimately decays into 80% pap. The same people who heralded it (or their social heirs) then start ringing the alarm bells.
David Morley
1 month ago
I guess I am one of those snooty people who thought they knew better than working class people what they should watch and enjoy. The only fly in that particular ointment being that I grew up working class, on a council estate, and wasn’t the only person turning their nose up at pap tv.
We certainly watched some of it – but we also sat down as a family and watched Play for Today, serious documentaries, adaptations of dickens and the rest. Nowadays I struggle to find anything worth watching. Baking, gardening, airhead island, antique hunting, property shows, formulaic dance shows etc etc. Why do we have nothing equivalent to the franco- German Arte?
Then again, visit any French newsagents and you’ll find magazines on brainy topics for a popular audience. Lots of them. Every month. I guess it answers itself.
Yeah, but France also gave us Michel Foucault. My parents were aspirational working class who did well from access to education after WW2. Used to watch this and other rubbish like Play Your Cards Right, Bullseye and 321 on a Saturday with my Mum. Happy childhood days of the 80s. Does watching Mastermind or The Adventure Game act as a counterweight to all the crass drivel I consumed?
Life isn’t so serious that we shouldn’t enjoy light entertainment (though even there there is better and worse) but television seems to have been entirely conquered by drivel. And few people now seem to feel that they should stretch themselves a bit. The middle classes included. Culturally we seem to have democratised downwards.
David Morley
1 month ago
Can we look forward to a similar piece on the innocent joys of Jim’ll Fix It?
Steve Jolly
1 month ago
The show’s still on the air here in the US, having improbably survived the retirement of its longtime host, Bob Barker. Ditto for Jeopardy. Sitcoms are all but dead and game shows appear to be going strong, most of them still running in the same time slot as always and generally outperforming all but the most popular scripted shows. Have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming. I suppose sitcoms did rely on stale tropes and cultural stereotypes. They were bound to be tied to the culture that created them. The vicarious greed that drives game shows, however, is eternal.
I can understand why there was so much haughty criticism of game shows decades ago. They represent a direct appeal to greed that must have seemed artless and simplistic at the time; an appeal to the lowest common denominator (which it wasn’t; TV could and did go lower still). If American TV was shallow, though, it was because American culture was always rather shallow and chimerical. The cultural bonds that tied Americans together were always limited and weak, many of them deliberate creations of the government for propaganda reasons. If mass media, mass communication, and the Internet are truly killing our cultures, Americans can take some solace from the fact we didn’t have all that much to lose to begin with. For traditionally minded Europeans though, it must be a pretty awful time, watching their ancient cultures fading and being replaced with empty materialism, greed, and the fad philosophies and ethics concocted by academics.
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Plenty of working class Brits thought it crass materialism of the same type that was systematically dismembering the industries on which their communities and class identities were dependent.
A few years ago a work colleague, Norm, asked me if I watched The Price is Right. I said that I didn’t, but he told me to watch that night. I figured his wife was going to be on, and she was, she was the first contestant called. I figured he knew this because the program was pre-recorded, but in fact the next day he told me they were the parents of one of the show’s models, and it was teed up in advance that Norm’s wife would be called from the audience. Anyway, I complimented his wife on her acting skills because she pulled off a pin-point impersonation of someone caught completely by surprise.
I thought this very interesting. There is a conflict between producing entertainment aimed at “the lowest common denominator” and innocent, popular fun. There is the conflict between those who genuinely care about high standards and those who just want to dismiss the lowers orders as immature who need to be told what to think and do and you explain it nicely.
For what it’s worth, I think we are safety to be on the side of trusting people even if that sometimes means we get cheap and nasty telly. There’s still a lot of quality and sophisticated stuff. More importantly, I don’t trust those who want to make the judgements.
I remember dreary bores whom opposed high value prizes and the National lottery. Thankfully these bores are now mostly dead along eith the sort of deference that meant such moralisers were treated with the respect they didn’t deserve.
I remember this as if it were yesterday. I was like a portal had opened. No more Juliet Bravo or All Creatures Great and Small. This was fun! The possibilities were limitless!! (Or so it seemed at the time).
In other words the snooty people at the Telegraph and Guardian were prescient.
Also, can we not treat the working class as a bloc, who all bought into crass game shows and Thatcherism. They didn’t all. While plenty of the lower middle classes did.
Yes, i am working class, couldn’t stand the crass COD, having said that, I can see it could have been liberating to some.
Yes. It’s an odd kind of liberation though. A bit like our similar culinary liberation movement – no more oppressive healthy meals, just fat and sugar laden food that would once have been eaten only by children, and only occasionally.
There does seem to be a kind of general rule of media (print, radio, film, tv, internet) that it is initially heralded as enlightenment for the masses, but ultimately decays into 80% pap. The same people who heralded it (or their social heirs) then start ringing the alarm bells.
I guess I am one of those snooty people who thought they knew better than working class people what they should watch and enjoy. The only fly in that particular ointment being that I grew up working class, on a council estate, and wasn’t the only person turning their nose up at pap tv.
We certainly watched some of it – but we also sat down as a family and watched Play for Today, serious documentaries, adaptations of dickens and the rest. Nowadays I struggle to find anything worth watching. Baking, gardening, airhead island, antique hunting, property shows, formulaic dance shows etc etc. Why do we have nothing equivalent to the franco- German Arte?
Then again, visit any French newsagents and you’ll find magazines on brainy topics for a popular audience. Lots of them. Every month. I guess it answers itself.
Yeah, but France also gave us Michel Foucault. My parents were aspirational working class who did well from access to education after WW2. Used to watch this and other rubbish like Play Your Cards Right, Bullseye and 321 on a Saturday with my Mum. Happy childhood days of the 80s. Does watching Mastermind or The Adventure Game act as a counterweight to all the crass drivel I consumed?
France has moved on from MF.
Life isn’t so serious that we shouldn’t enjoy light entertainment (though even there there is better and worse) but television seems to have been entirely conquered by drivel. And few people now seem to feel that they should stretch themselves a bit. The middle classes included. Culturally we seem to have democratised downwards.
Can we look forward to a similar piece on the innocent joys of Jim’ll Fix It?
The show’s still on the air here in the US, having improbably survived the retirement of its longtime host, Bob Barker. Ditto for Jeopardy. Sitcoms are all but dead and game shows appear to be going strong, most of them still running in the same time slot as always and generally outperforming all but the most popular scripted shows. Have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming. I suppose sitcoms did rely on stale tropes and cultural stereotypes. They were bound to be tied to the culture that created them. The vicarious greed that drives game shows, however, is eternal.
I can understand why there was so much haughty criticism of game shows decades ago. They represent a direct appeal to greed that must have seemed artless and simplistic at the time; an appeal to the lowest common denominator (which it wasn’t; TV could and did go lower still). If American TV was shallow, though, it was because American culture was always rather shallow and chimerical. The cultural bonds that tied Americans together were always limited and weak, many of them deliberate creations of the government for propaganda reasons. If mass media, mass communication, and the Internet are truly killing our cultures, Americans can take some solace from the fact we didn’t have all that much to lose to begin with. For traditionally minded Europeans though, it must be a pretty awful time, watching their ancient cultures fading and being replaced with empty materialism, greed, and the fad philosophies and ethics concocted by academics.
Plenty of working class Brits thought it crass materialism of the same type that was systematically dismembering the industries on which their communities and class identities were dependent.
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