Television, drug of the nation

The only thing more embarrassing about Embarrassing Bodies than my own voyeurism is Dr Christian's narcissism. The people who go on it occasionally appear embarrassed but not sufficiently embarrassed to consider declining the opportunity to parade their embarrassing problems before an audience of millions, all of whom should be sufficiently embarrassed on their behalf. The reason for this is clearly that the programme makers must be picking up the tab for the eventual treatment, to be able to show us the wondrous transformations available via surgery. Witness ducklings becoming swans (well, sort of) whilst Dr Christian struts around in a too tight, too loud, too stripy shirt.

In the recent series they seem to have gone out of their way to bring us all new horror, they even visited Merry Hill shopping centre for Christ's sake. It doesn't help that I return home when it's on and often sit with my dinner on my lap whilst it burbles in the background. Consequently I have no desire to hear the word 'prolapse' ever again or to glance up from my plate at the precise moment when a vagina squirts on screen in a supposedly educational programme. It is the absolute antithesis of erotic, yet the voyeuristic nature and below-the-waist obsessions make it feel very dirty indeed.

The teenage episodes are so uncomfortable that I have finally drawn the line, I don't care that the teens seem to lack the necessary shame to prevent them parading in front of millions with their lumpy testicles and all but it's dangerously close to peddling or words of a similar genesis. I'm no prude but I don't need it in my living room and to find myself forced to question a programme maker's motives.

Some other programmes just try too hard. Four Rooms anyone? It's a bizarre hybrid of the daytime 'clear your attic' shows and the well-trodden 'expert' panel critique. Essentially people bring in their stuff and go into each of the four rooms to see if the 'experts' will offer to buy it from them, once they've left a room they can't go back.

Invariably the experts never want to pay the price that the person has imagined they might get and nothing gets bought. The only interesting parts are when greed overwhelms the individuals concerned and they're tempted to see just one more dealer, who usually has no interest whatsoever and they've blown it.

The programme so wants to be Dragon's Den but fails largely due to the rooms-based mechanic giving us no competition between the 'experts'. It doesn't help that they're all so generally unlikeable - not in a good 'Simon Cowell' way, they're just painfully dull. In their fields they may be flamboyant mavericks but in tv-land they're two dimensional would-be celebs. The fact that I've watched it a few times and couldn't even tell you their names says it all.

My legendary long-standing gripe with TV is scheduling and the ongoing pattern of US-based-series establishing themselves on terrestrial free-to-air before being purchased (normally when you're hooked around season 3 or 4) by paid-for satellite/cable networks that I don't subscribe to. It happened with Lost, Nip/Tuck and Six Feet Under among other things, now it's happened to Dexter, True Blood, Mad Men and even Nurse Jackie.

The latter appeared to be a victim of the BBC's own psychotic behaviour in the scheduling sector. It seems they are rarely capable of giving a series a regular slot or day even, despite having more than enough channels.

For example I can understand that the bulk of the English population are not sufficiently entertained by black comedy; there can be no other excuse for showing five episodes of the sublime Psychoville 2 on a Thursday then putting the final one out on a Monday. Was it intended to confuse our PVR machines or us?

It's a demonstration of wilfully perverse scheduling by the BBC, the kind of behaviour that sees them play out the first two episodes of The Apprentice on consecutive nights before making it weekly on Wednesday but oddly placing the final on a Sunday. It's as if they know we no longer make an appointment to view and are trying to fuck with our minds.

Perhaps they'd like it if we treated them in the same shoddy manner, randomly changing the date and sum of our license payments or paid for two months before sending our money to other fee-based subscription channels instead. That's what seems to be happening anyway, and if I could convince the licensing authorities that my 37 inch screen is actually a computer monitor (something it eventually will be) then perhaps they have no grounds to charge us at all?

Meanwhile the agony of becoming hooked on a show viewed on 'free to air' which then becomes cynically (or in a commercial sense perhaps cleverly) purchased by the subscription channels is really only encouraging us all to become obsessed with getting our 'fix' elsewhere - whether it's legal or not. Drug of the nation indeed.