BlogAmy

BBC 1! BBC 2! BBC 3! ... BBC Heaven!

I'm an addict. A BBC America addict. On my cable box, it's channel 225. If I only had channel 225, I'd be a happy camper.

I've always loved British humor. Monty Python is my all-time favorite -- I'd provide a link, but I couldn't find one that wasn't loaded with totally obnoxious stuff like a lame midi playing the theme song from Flying Circus. Anyway... one day, I tuned to BBC America, and I stumbled upon Ground Force. The Ground Force team comes in and revamps your "garden" (your yard) in just two days and with a budge of about £2000 ($3000 US). They also surprise someone in the house who has been whisked away on holiday or some work conference or some other such distraction. The surpisee comes home and finds their derelict garden transformed into a haven.

I was hooked.

Then I found What Not To Wear with Trinny & Susannah. Two fashion designers with a cruel-to-be-kind approach to telling fashion victims what they should and should not be wearing. The US has come up with its own version... it stinks.

The Office has me in stitches. It's a British Dilbert-type office with a boss who is smarmy and thinks much too highly of himself.

Then came Changing Rooms -- the predecessor to America's Trading Spaces. There is simply no comparison between designers such as Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Linda Barker and Anna Ryder-Richardson.

The list goes on and on. More shows that I watch on BBC America are:
3 Non Blondes
Bargain Hunt
BBC World News
Cash in the Attic
Coupling (US version comes out this fall)
Faking It (US version came out this summer -- not bad)
House Invaders (I LOVE this show! They redecorate 3 rooms in your house in one day using things you have in your shed)
So Graham Norton
Talking Movies
I'm now starting to watch some of the crime dramas they have on there as well.

See? I told you I was an addict. I don't sit around and watch TV all day. I record them on my PI-VO (our name for our generic TI-VO) and then watch a bunch of episodes at once after Michael goes to bed -- skipping the commercials, of course.

What's happened to American TV? Why can't we come up with our own good stuff nowadays? The Simpson's is always fresh, funny and original. Matt Groening calls The Office one of the funniest shows he's seen in years.

Michael, on the other hand, does not find any of the British programming to be the least bit interesting or funny. His comment after seeing 3 Non-Blondes was, "I think I'll let you have this show for yourself, honey."

Perhaps humor is in the eye of the beholder and the ear of the behearer.

{{{Coming Soon to a blog near you! What's all this BBC1, BBC2 business? The history of the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) is quite interesting!}}}