Crazy Daytime Television

Watching a great deal of daytime television over the months, it's made me think of new formats for programmes. There are lots of shows about buying and selling, antiques as well as houses. People with an obsession about moving to the country as well as Australia. There's probably far too many, but that's another story. Just turn these formats on their head and you get some interesting ideas. 'Pointless', the gameshow, which is on at teatime, took the idea of people knowing about obscure answers, and thus, getting the lowest score,  unlike 'Family Fortunes' which was the opposite, getting as many points on answers to certain questions got higher scores and if so, you'd be a winner. Why not a show where people who've moved to Australia suddenly decide they want to move back to the United Kingdom? In 'Wanted Down Under,' families put themselves through the hoop travelling all that way and deciding whether it's a good idea to leave family and friends behind in Britain to move all that way, find a job and then a home to live in. I just wonder if some people are just going on the show so they get a free holiday to Australia, a nice week stooging around, looking at houses and talking to people who might or might not give you a job. All that emotional upset, leaving granny or grandpa behind, missing friends and neighbours, but think of all the problems of moving to the other side of the world. Then there's the other shows, 'Escape To The Country.' Instead of selling up and moving to a rural cottage, with a kitchen which is far too big, with acres of land, room to keep a pony, a tennis court and a huge lawn which needs mowing every couple of weeks, Do these people who go through all this trouble take into consideration what living in the countryside consists of? How far is the nearest Tesco branch, or Sainsbury's? How far away is it to the nearest shop if you run out of milk, what is it going to be like if you move to a house half-way up a hill in the Yorkshire Dales, how are you going to cope when you get woken at 6 o'clock in the morning by a cockerel crows, a cow moos or sheep start bleating? Or, if you are late home from work in the evening, caught behind a tractor and trailer or a herd of sheep or cows being moved along the narrow lanes around where you live? So, let's have a television show about people who get fed up with life in the country and decide that they want to 'Escape To The City.' They just long for a home where you can stand up straight and not hit your head on low beams, long to be able to walk on nice, clean pavements instead of muddy pathways, have lots of choice when it comes to finding ideal places to buy their milk, don't have to worry about having a broadband connection, and don't have to be woken in the early hours of the morning by cows mooing to be milked or cockerels crowing. Instead, they're woken by car alarms going off and not being turned off. They don't mind having to find a place to park and getting a parking ticket.  Oh, the joys of being oh so ironic!

We'd come up with another sort of 'buying and selling' show. Instead of buying something and selling it at auction and attempting to make a profit (such as in 'Bargain Hunt, 'Flog It,' or 'Antiques Road Trip.) the contestants have to either 'skip it or sell it.' Some of the stuff people buy in these shows is really good quality, but you could buy real tat, something worthless, kitch, and you have a panel of people who have to decide whether the item is worth keeping or whether it goes in a  skip or is crushed in a crusher. You could go through someone's' home selecting the items to be skipped or sold. A good way to clear a home of clutter. Perhaps, instead of having a skip, you could shoot the item out of a canon into space, or you could put it on a wall and throw balls at it until it breaks. Just think of the worst-possible gift someone has been given and is sitting at the back of a cupboard and they don't every use it. This could be a good way to get rid of it. It might have horrible memories in some way or other.