I confess, given the right frame of mind (situation vacant), I’ll watch just about anything:
Exhibit A: **Police-chase footage shows. ** I don’t look for them in the TV schedule, but if I happen to find one by channel-flipping, I’ll watch it. I particularly like the ones using foreign footage, from the U.K., The Netherlands, or Russia. Once in a while, there’s footage from a Latin American country, too. (It’s nice to know that the USA doesn’t hold the global monopoly on desperate, dumbass getaway artists.) I was surprised by a program of Russian chase footage – the Moscow cops are equipped with brand-new-looking American (GM?) cop cars and light/siren hardware! I don’t know what I was expecting – maybe those wimpy-assed compact police cars with the little pill-shaped blue light on top and the tinny siren – like the cop cars used in France in the '60’s or '70’s. What I’d love to see is some Autobahn chase footage from Germany.
Exhibit B: Infomercials for multiple-CD pop song compilations. I’ve watched a zillion of these over the years (even the '60’s folk song one!), without ever having bought one. (Maybe I’m waiting for a collection to come along that perfectly completes my music collection without redundantly offering songs I already have.) In the meantime, though, I use them to bone up my music-trivia knowledge. “I Love You” by the Climax Blues Band… yessss… :wally
O.K., your turn!
Tornados. If it has a tornado in it, I must watch it. Even if it’s 2 in the morning and I have to work at 6.
Making of documentaries. If it’s about manufacturing processes, even of things I wouldn’t normally care about, I will watch it compulsively. If it’s a marathon I will sit down and watch the entire marathon until I pass out from exhaustion. Damn you History Channel and Food Network.
TV shows with things blowing up. Particularly documentaries about explosives.
I LOVE the Discovery channel!
I also like the “Stupid people in cars doing stupid things” shows, but one series has either Mark Hamil, or someone who sounds just like him. The commentary is insultingly condescending, and begs to be muted- otherwise I just sit there and yell at the TV.
There’s this show on Lifetime- Yes, Lifetime. it’s called “How clean is your house”, or something like that. There’s these two snotty, very well to do, oldish english ladies who invade a particularly nasty house, find the nastiest spots, and then teach the inhabitants how to not be nasty slobs. Being a batchelor, the show gives me tremendous self confidence about how “clean” my apartment is. Plus, it’s a great TMI fix. Cat turds and pee on the carpet, nasty litterboxes, slime in the fridge, rat on the bookcase (probably a pet, but who knows)- it just doesn’t get better(worse?) that that!
I’m with Slortar. Anything that has to do with how things are made or done will keep me up way past my bedtime. If ever I won the lottory I think I would buy some type of RV and spend the rest of my life driving around to different places learning all about that kind of stuff. I’d take the tours, talk to the machine operators, I can’t imagine anything cooler.
I like police footage shows as well, except for the ones hosted by that retired police guy (can’t think of his name… if you watch these types of shows you’ve seen him before though). Everything he says is just so melodramtic and cheesy.
Stuff I probably wouldn’t want to admit I watch? Home remodeling shows (what IS it about Paige on Trading Spaces that makes her so dang attractive?) and those ‘you’ve just one a complete life make-over’ type shows where they redo a person’s wardrobe, give them a completely new face via plastic surgery, and then unleash them on their unsuspecting family. They never show the follow-up however, where the now ultra-attractive woman divorces her dumpy husband and uses her new looks to trade up a few notches :).
Whose-line? Classic stuff. Of those here that watch it, do you like the UK version or the Drew Carey version?
Hello, I am Casey, and I watch City Council meetings on local cable access. I have also been known to spend hour long or more chunks of an otherwise beautiful Saturday afternoon watching ads for the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts Collection.
The Amanda Show and even All That get me to stop flipping channels every time. I’m a sucker for sketch comedy. I love the Kids in the Hall and Exit 57. But, goodness gracious, these are shows for tweeners. What the heck is a 34 year old guy doing watching and laughing at Sugar & Coffee or the Judge Trudy Show?
On the public access channel in Marin County, there was a Tantric Sex show hosted by the most stereotypical Marin couple possible. I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s horribly fascinating.
Also: “Silly Go Lucky,” a show from Fuji TV that runs here on weekends. I don’t understand it a bit of it, of course, as it’s all in Japanese. But I insist on watching it.
