Dancing With The “Stars”
Having your cultural references surgically removed when you become an expat can be fairly wearing. If ever I watch television with The Special One, I spend most of my time apologizing for not knowing that the guy from CSI: Milwaukee was actually the former star of the hilarious CBS sitcom Three Women & A Toaster [...]
A very public sense of loss
I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never exactly been a royalist. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the queen and her mob of dubious inbreds, and I’m sure they’re a useful attraction for the theme park that is Englandland. But you’ll never catch me manning the barricades with the republican forced [...]
Ten things we can learn about life from American sitcoms
Though my first visit to the United States wasn’t until I’d reached my 20s, I think it’s fair to say that I thought I knew a fair amount about the country through the years of watching American TV. From Newhart to Chips, US telly played an unquestionable (although on some level, highly questionable) role in [...]
Never mind the show, let’s watch the adverts
It’s the biggest day of America’s televisual year tomorrow – a day so big that retailers such as Best Buy are ramping up their marketing to capture the trade of all those people tempted to upgrade their televisions in preparation. Food is being readied, beer being bought, and corner shopsbodegas are running out of ice [...]
General Hospital: a lesson in the difference between fact and fiction
Luckily enough, I’ve never had to spend much time in hospital. There was the time I fainted and fell back off my stool in a physics class at school, although walking in with a suspected fractured skull and walking out with a fractured thumb was frankly embarrassing. And when I was a toddler, I naively [...]
Life’s too short to deal with cable companies
Once upon a time, I used to work in the murky world of cable and satellite television. How the channels I worked for ever got to air I’m not sure, given that they were almost entirely populated by 25 year olds in their first jobs and with a near-universal penchant for binge drinking. And that [...]
A cultural loss
In a classic ‘the dog ate my homework’ style, can I apologize for the lack of the last segment of the 200 Things You Simply Have To Know About New York list? I may or may not have written the vast majority of the final 50 points on a series of Post It notes, which [...]
When the chips hit the fan
It’s always strange to find out how other people view your nation. For example, every single day, somebody talks to me in a faux British accent that suggests they’ve come straight off the set of Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. To the majority of Americans, the British are posh and haughty. Even the [...]
Where’s Sky Sports when you need it?
There’s something slightly strange about watching football on television in the United States. For a start, you have to tune into a station called the Fox Soccer Channel. I’ve no idea what this ‘soccer’ thing is, but if anybody has got any insight, do let me know. Nevertheless, if you’re separated from your beloved team [...]
