Nobody has to know…
I’ve watched a fair bit of online TV over the past few months
Long term readers of this column will know that my favourite ever TV show (yep, even gazumping Little House On The Prairie from my youth) is the original American version of the reality jaunt called ‘Survivor.’ Obsessed and addicted hardly cover my love for the weekly antics of the castaways as they try to get by for 39 days on a desert island without getting voted off by their peers.
They’ve been going for a whopping 40 seasons on this show – 2 seasons a year for 20 years. Don’t judge me (I bet you are), but I’ve seen every single episode. The latest season, just finished last week, featured a whole pile of the winners from the past 40 seasons back to battle each other in an ultimate ‘champion of champions’ kind-of stoush. If you love this sort of reality TV, which is a different kind of reality to The Bachelor, Masterchef or First Dates, then it was absolutely gripping. A total bonus to have brand new episodes of my fave show airing whilst we’ve been locked down. The man upstairs was looking after me!
[Careful – spoiler alert] Just like the saying “How’re ya going?” the utterance of “What’re ya watching?” is now entrenched in our vocab. People really mean “what’re ya binge-watching?” in these days of internet television. Like just about everybody, my lovely wife and I also watched Tiger King over the school holiday break. If you’ve been under a rock during isolation times, then this TV show was the one to just about take the all-time cake. It only went for about 7 episodes, and to say we couldn’t take our eyes off the ol’ television during every minute is a serious understatement. We were hooked, not necessarily because it was quality TV, but because it was just so, well, out there. Much to the astonishment of our 18 year old, who would walk into the family room with that mixed look of shock and disappointment on his face, we’d be working our way through a bag of chips watching as the one armed person (who’d just had their hand bitten off by a Tiger) talked matter-of-factly about life as a ‘keeper going on sans-arm, or as the Tiger King himself married another man – and I mean another man, because he was already married to one, so now he has two husbands.
Most people in the whole wide world now have a firm opinion as to whether the lady arch-enemy of the Tiger King (yep – it’s just like Batman and the Riddler) actually bopped off her husband to better herself. I’m firmly in one camp on this, but I’ll keep my opinion to myself.
Anyway, with the Tiger King show now done and dusted, we’ve moved on in our search for new bingeworthy television. Plugging the hole for us at the moment is the show called ‘MadMen’ about TV advertising execs in the early 60s. Then… my isolation dreams came true! I was scanning the remote for some exciting new show when I stumbled upon one of the back channels and couldn’t believe my eyes. Almost every old episode of American Survivor is there on tap… just waiting there for me to watch it again! Aaaahh … all those Tribal Councils, all those Immunity Challenges, all the backstabbing, all the conniving, all the deceit, all the ‘alliances’, and of course, all the Idols. 20 years ago the episodes were in 4:3, not in widescreen, but who cares. Season One, Episode One – and the castaways are stranded. Not sure how I’ll fare working my way through almost 560 episodes… but I’ll give it a crack. Lucky nobody else knows what I’m watching, just me, the Castaways and the Tiger King. Together Alone in the family room.