{"id":27678,"date":"2014-09-05T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T05:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27678"},"modified":"2014-09-05T07:22:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T12:22:56","slug":"qotd-tv-documentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/09\/05\/qotd-tv-documentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: TV documentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started this job I\u2019d review one almost every fortnight. Always there\u2019d be something worth watching: on the horrors of the Pacific or the Eastern Front, say; or castles; or Churchill; or medieval sword techniques. But now it\u2019s all crap like <em>The Hidden World of Georgian Needlecraft<\/em> or <em>In The Footsteps of Twelve Forgotten South American Civilisations Which All Look The Same<\/em> or <em>A Brooding, Long-Haired Scottish Geographer Shouts From Inside A Volcano Why Climate Change Is Worse Than Ever<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The presenters have got more annoying too. I mean, I\u2019m not saying some of the old ones weren\u2019t infuriating with their hand-waving and tics and mannerisms and wheezings. But the new ones are just vacuous, unformed squits. They make you yearn for a reverse <em>Logan\u2019s Run<\/em> world, where everyone under 30 is executed for being so tiresome. A lot of them are women, obviously, chosen mainly for their simpering looks and charming speech impediments and unerring knack for fronting the dullest imaginable subject matter.<\/p>\n<p>No doubt the people responsible for commissioning this drivel think they\u2019re redressing the balance, in much the same way progressive historians do when they demand we empathise with medieval peasants rather than learning about what Edward I did to the Welsh and the Scots. Well, I can\u2019t speak for all oppressed women here, but I think I can for my wife. They\u2019re not going, \u2018Oh, good. Finally a documentary with my name on it, about what it was like to be a woman\u2019s maidservant in Elizabethan York.\u2019 They\u2019re going, \u2018Who is that irritating little cow? Why is she on the screen putting on that little-girl-lost voice for my husband? And why the hell isn\u2019t this documentary about something actually interesting, like, say, castles, or Churchill or medieval sword techniques?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>James Delingpole, <a href=\"http:\/\/jamesdelingpole.com\/2014\/09\/the-glories-of-john-betjeman-and-why-we-need-more-english-eccentrics-eg-me-on-tv\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The glories of John Betjeman. And why we need more English eccentrics \u2013 eg me \u2013 on TV&#8221;, <em>JamesDelingpole.com<\/em><\/a>, 2014-09-04.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started this job I\u2019d review one almost every fortnight. Always there\u2019d be something worth watching: on the horrors of the Pacific or the Eastern Front, say; or castles; or Churchill; or medieval sword techniques. But now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,57,28,41],"tags":[101],"class_list":["post-27678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-humour","category-media","category-quotations","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7cq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27692,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27678\/revisions\/27692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}