Television has given an inestimable boost to what sociologists call ‘cocooning’ – turning your back on the world to live in your own family space with the drawbridge up ... It makes us think we know people who are, in fact, strangers. It puffs up into apparent importance ‘personalities’ some of whom are little better than well-lit dullards. It accustoms us to mocking fellow humans from a safe distance, enjoying their humiliation on heartless confrontation and reality shows. At least the Roman crowd at the Circus Maximus had to smell the blood and catch the eyes of the victims, and could not change channels if they became distressed. Watching physical or emotional violence done to real people on TV we stay safe in our chairs, growing ever more layers of callousness.
It may be worth reflecting that all our fretting about ‘public service broadcasting’, watersheds and regulation may one day turn out to have been a diversion. It might be the medium itself we should be looking at through narrowed, suspicious eyes. Libby Purves, The Times
The BBC has been doing tremendously well, of late, beating ITV at its own game of peddling trash to the masses. The Economist 11 May 2002
One of the few good things about modern times: if you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. Kurt Vonnegut
Shoot on Sight, says President – on last night’s television programme Eddie at Large, Monsoon referred to Idi Amin as fatty bum bum. The Comic Strip Presents ... Eddie Monsoon – A Life? Channel 4 1984
Just some of the headlines behind the enigma that is Eddie Monsoon. The tip of an iceberg of an amazing portfolio of adverse publicity which would shame any man into the depths of alcoholic despair and drug dependency. ibid.
Luckily, I fell in with the old German ex-patriot crowd, and that’s why I developed my new quiz show – How Pure Was Your Grandpapa? Didn’t do much business in Brazil but it was quite a hit in Austria. ibid. Eddie
Channel 4 is the channel for child porn and homosexuals and I had both in my show. ibid.
I think for too long the Labour Party has viewed television as our persecutor; well I want to use television as our tool, our servant. Peter Mandelson
For fifty years sex has defined the British sitcom. As much by its absence as its presence. Sex and the Sitcom, BBC 2011
The malaise runs deeper to the heart of our comic sensibility and to the birth of the genre. ibid.
Thanks to the sexual revolution we women were free to be as frustrated as men. ibid.
TV has come to depend on these experts to offer meaningful expertise into life’s great mysteries. The Funny Side of TV Experts, BBC 2009
The heyday for the on-screen voice of authority came during the dark days of the Second World War. ibid.
TV’s first lady of cooking Marguerite Patten. ibid.
Fanny [Cradock] hit our screens in the 1950s. ibid.
The Tomorrow’s World team looked like your favourite school teachers but were actually revolutionaries ... They didn’t really have any expertise. ibid.
The 1970s also gave rise to another type – the mad scientist. ibid.
The age of the lifestyle expert was upon us. ibid.
Last Thursday evening, we sat as a family and saw a programme that started at 6.35. And it was the dirtiest programme I have seen for a very long time. Mary Whitehouse, TV campaigner
If they didn’t show it on the screen, most people wouldn’t know about oral sex. Mary Whitehouse
I think it’s extraordinary that people with a brilliance in many ways, of making a programme of that kind, couldn’t have extended their awareness to the effect of what they were doing upon the children who were receiving it. That was almost as though they were a bit dumb. Mary Whitehouse, re Dr Who
50 years ago a new kind of television exploded on to our screens: Grenada Television’s World in Action, a current affairs show that rocked governments and ratted the cages of the bad guys. The World in Action Years, ITV 2013
These shows have helped us imagine the kind of place America is. Alan Yentob, The United States of Television I: America in Primetime, BBC 1994
For a successful prime-time show episodes can number in the hundreds. ibid.
Big Love: 5 seasons, 53 episodes; highest rating 1.8 million. HBO. ibid.
Prime-time masculinity used to be a lot simpler. ibid.
Father Knows Best: 6 seasons, 203 episodes 1954-1960. ibid.
The Honeymooners: 1 season, 39 episodes: ‘Bang! Zoom! Straight to the Moon.’ ibid.
The Dick Van Dyke Show: 5 seasons, 158 episodes (CBS); All in the Family: 9 seasons, 208 episodes (CBS); The Cosby Show: 8 seasons, 197 episodes (NBC); Thirtysomething: 4 seasons, 81 episodes (ABC); The Simpsons: 23 seasons, 498 episodes (Fox); Everybody Loves Raymond: 9 seasons, 210 episodes (CBS); The Bernie Mac Show: 5 seasons, 104 episodes (Fox); Modern Family: 3 seasons, 60 episodes (ABC); The Sopranos: 6 seasons, 86 episodes (HBO); Mad Men: 4 seasons 52 episodes (AMC); Breaking Bad: 4 seasons, 46 episodes (AMC). ibid.
Gomer Pyle, The Munsters, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, The Addams Family ... Alan Yentob, The United States of Television II: America in Primetime: The Misfit
The Addams Family: 2 seasons, 64 episodes (ABC); Taxi: 5 seasons 114 episodes (NBC); Seinfeld: 9 seasons, 180 episodes (NBC); Beavis and Butt-Head: 8 seasons, 222 episodes (MTV); Twin Peaks: 2 seasons 30 episodes (ABC); Six Feet Under: 5 seasons, 63 episodes (HBO); True Blood: 4 seasons, 48 episodes (HBO); Freaks and Geeks: 1 season, 18 episodes (NBC); The Larry Sanders Show: 6 seasons, 39 episodes (HBO); Arrested Development: 3 seasons, 53 episodes (Fox); 30 Rock: 6 seasons, 107 episodes (NBC); Curb Your Enthusiasm: 8 seasons, 80 episodes (HBO). ibid.
‘But he’s still a man. And a male likes to feel that he thinks up all the ideas.’ Alan Yentob, The United States of Television III: America in Primetime: The Independent Woman, ‘Father Knows Best’, wife to daughter
I Love Lucy: 6 seasons, 194 episodes (CBS); The Dick van Dyke Show: 5 seasons, 158 episodes (CBS); The Mary Tyler Moore Show: 7 seasons, 168 episodes (CBS): Murphy Brown: 10 seasons, 247 episodes (CBS); Roseanne: 9 seasons, 222 episodes (ABC); Sex and the City: 6 seasons, 94 episodes (HBO); Desperate Housewives: 8 seasons, 169 episodes (ABC); Grey’s Anatomy: 8 seasons, 160 episodes (ABC); Weeds: 7 seasons, 89 episodes (Showtime); The Good Wife: 3 seasons, 57 episodes (CBS); Nurse Jackie (Showtime): 3 seasons, 36 episodes. ibid.
Primetime is the showcase for the best in American television. Alan Yentob, The United States of Television IV: America in Primetime
24: 192 episodes (Fox); The Rifleman (ABC) & Gunsmoke (CBS) & The Lone Ranger (ABC); MASH: 11 seasons, 251 episodes. (CBS); Ben Casey & NYPD Blue & Marcus Welby MD … House: 8 seasons, 164 episodes (Fox); Alias & Superwomen & Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Xena & The Avengers & X-Files … The X Files: 9 seasons, 203 episodes (Fox); NYPD Blue: 12 seasons, 261 episodes (ABC); Dragnet (NBC) & The Shield … Homicide: Life on the Street: 7 seasons, 122 episode (NBC) … The Wire: 5 seasons, 6 episodes (HBO) … Dexter: 6 seasons, 72 episodes (Showtime). ibid.
From talent shows in India to bizarre Brazilian comedies, to the news in the Middle East, everyone loves television especially me. The Greatest Shows on Earth I, Channel 4 2013
Reality show Miss Bumbum ... to find the nation’s best arse. ibid.
Brazilian TV’s obsession with female flesh has a more uncomfortable side verging on the sinister. ibid.
A degrading show that verges on the sadomasochistic. ibid.
Fourteen North Korean defective beauties as they’re called feature in a light entertainment talk show. The Greatest Shows on Television: Korea
I’m about to play a little game of chance with an imaginary coin. Derren Brown: The Experiments: The Gameshow, Channel 4 2011
Ian always had two options – A or B. One good outcome and one with a bad. Tonight we’re looking at what happens when you put the power to make those choices in the hands of a faceless crowd. ibid.
Tonight’s experiment is about what happens when we’re allowed to act anonymously as part of a crowd. ibid.
Wearing these masks will ensure you can make your decisions anonymously. ibid.