Television

English television gets worse and worse. Even though I can get lots of channels courtesy of my Sky digibox, I invariably find nothing on worth watching. There are very few decent comedy shows nowadays.'Not Going Out' starring Lee Mack, Tim Vine, Sally Bretton and Katy Wix is one of the few current sit-coms on British TV. I also like 'Doc Martin' and 'Outnumbered' although the latter is not as funny as it used to be in earlier series. Long gone are comedy classics like 'Only Fools and Horses'; 'Black Adder'; 'Fawlty Towers', ‘2point4 children’; ‘My Wife Next Door’; ‘Please Sir!’; ‘Three Up, Two Down’; ‘To the Manor Born’; ‘The Good Life’; ‘The Vicar of Dibley’; ‘One Foot in the Grave’; ‘Dad's Army’; ‘Yes Minister & Yes Prime Minister’; ‘Porridge’; ‘Men Behaving Badly’; 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet'; ‘Just Good Friends’; ‘Man About the House’ and many more!

There are still good crime series 'Law and Order UK' is currently running whilst ‘Above Suspicion’; ‘Trial & Retribution’; ‘Lewis’; ‘Foyle's War’; ‘Inspector George Gently’ and ‘Whitechapel’ appear occasionally whilst there are often repeats of ‘Agatha Christie's Poirot’ and ‘A Touch of Frost’. In the past we had ‘Waking the Dead’; ‘the Prime Suspect series’; ‘Inspector Morse’; ‘Cracker’; ‘Rebus ‘; ‘Judge John Deed’; ‘Kavanagh QC’ and ‘The Bill.

But what else is there? Some football, Eastenders, Antiques Roadshow, Country File, The Apprentice (occasionally) and Question Time. 

Fortunately, I mostly only watch TV between 9pm & midnight Spanish time yet I still often end up watching Spanish TV - notably La Sexta 3. That channel shows films all day and I have seen many good films of late. Some are quite recent but they do show old films too. Last night I watched Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining' (a bit scary so my wife went to bed early) and, a couple of nights ago, I watched 'The Sting' featuring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Robert Shaw.. A bit old but still one of my favourite films. It doesn't even matter that my Spanish is not yet good enough because I can watch the films in their original language!