As a student, I’m probably one of a rare breed when I say I don’t watch TV. Students all over the nation shuffle into their living rooms and stare at the shiny box for an hour or two every night. I can’t say I really understand why they’d want to watch People With Shitty Lives On A Random Fucking Street In London every night (Editor’s note: It turns out that was the working title. It’s called Eastenders now).

As far as I’m concerned, British TV has some problems. Here are two of them, because I know you’re dying to hear it:

Dramatic Reconstructions

I’ll admit, right here, that some television shows have an interesting premise. You know what kind of stuff I mean: A two-hour special on how Mrs. Mabel and all these other country fucks (I come from the countryside, so I’m allowed to say that) were abducted by aliens or some shit like that, and then they got probed. And the BBC have done some huge exposé and they’ve got all these startling facts and opinions from experts.

This is the aspect of other peoples’ lives that I’m interested to hear, as a student, because it’s not boring-ass shit that I could experience myself if I was poor enough and lived in London. It’s stuff that has some mystery behind it, some element of the unknown. I’ve never been abducted by aliens and probed (I wish!), so I’d be interested in watching a television show about people who have taken metal up the ass.

But then the producers come along and inject a healthy serving of FUCK. Every single interesting interview or scene or narration, where anything is described as having happened, gets supplemented with a “Dramatic Reconstruction”. You know what I mean: Black and white film, slow motion, actors and actresses that look nothing like who they’re trying to portray, exaggerated and obviously faked falls or bashes to the head, complemented by sweeping camera shots and wild shakiness to try and make us feel like “we’re there”.

Well it’s bullshit! Stop doing that. If you haven’t got footage of the original event, don’t try and recreate it. The BBC, as well as all the other television companies in this country, seem to assume that we haven’t all got imaginations, because that’s what they’re trying to replace with these goddamn retarded reconstructions. It turns out every single person watching the show can imagine the scene just fine, thank you, from your description. That’s what imagination is there for.

Now, if they started using proper actors for these reconstructions, it’d be awesome. Seeing Brad Pitt get abducted on British TV would be bitchin’.

The 100 Best Stupid Fucking Shows

I’m sure you’ve all experienced the rash of shows in recent times that serve you up a healthy dose of funny, or outrageous, or disgusting, or insert-adjective-here. They’re the “100 best [something]” shows, and they have the potential to be awesome.

If the producers took the 100 best comedy clips ever and placed them, back to back, into Windows Movie Maker, and then shipped it off to be broadcast, everyone would be happy. You would actually have the 100 best comedy clips of all time, playing in front of you, and it would be hilarious. The best hour of your life, I reckon.

But what actually happens? They take the 100 best comedy clips, which could EASILY fill an hour if left alone, and then they stretch them out to 2 hours by splicing people who “know shit” into the clips. You’ll be watching some classic Laurel and Hardy, or something similarly bodacious, and just before it gets to the really funny bit it’ll cut to some smarmy FUCK who thinks he knows something about Laurel and Hardy even though he wasn’t alive when they were, giving you his opinion on comedy, and what makes it great.

I don’t fucking CARE what you think makes comedy great, OR why you like Laurel and Hardy. Stop using big words to try and make me think you’re an important person. Hardy was about to run around that corner and face-plant a plank that Laurel was holding!

Instead of letting the viewer just watch the funnies, get their jollies, and subsequently give the show a great rating, they cut out all of the fun parts and inject some fuck-ass boring parts because they wanted to make it into a show with “substance”. All of these b-list celebrities probably feel important because they’re on television and they’re being asked their opinion about something, as well.

It’ll be a sad day when I start giving a fuck what the “Assistant editor of the Sun” thinks about Lindsey Lohan’s exploits in The 100 Craziest Celebrity Boo-Boos.

Just show me the fucking nipple-slip.