The wife and I, dear reader, are in the habit of watching a little television before retiring to bed, and therein lies a tale.
For the past couple of months, said television consisted of episodes of Masterchef Australia, and do allow me to spend a couple of lines extolling this program. Extremely competent chefs guide a bunch of home cooks through the length of a series, whittling them down week by week, until the last one standing is finally crowned champion. They hosts are affable, the show is gratifyingly without overt histrionics, and everybody’s love for food just shines through the entire thing. And anything that is associated with food, I’ll have you know, sits just fine with me.
But alas, a couple of days ago, that particular series got over, and we now had two questions to answer in the evening.* One thing led to another, and by a process of elimination we settled on a show we hadn’t started yet. Of which, it must be said, there are many – this is a household in which the youngest is off on the start of her day at seven thirty in the morning. We retire early in these parts. But anyways, to get back to the topic du jour, we settled on a show we hadn’t seen yet: Black Mirror.
We informed some friends of ours about this decision, expecting the usual fist bumps and pats-on-the-backs to come our way. But to our consternation, all we got was consternation. “Good luck”, said one particularly laconic friend. Another suggested, quite seriously, that we intersperse successive episodes with at least two evenings of PG Wodehouse at the very minimum. Now, there is nothing wrong with a spot of Pelham in the evenings, but it was the first time I was being recommended Wodehouse as a curative.
Still, how bad can it really be, we asked ourselves, as we settled down with our dinners in front of the television, and started to watch the first episode.
Now, dear reader, you and I have known each other for over a year via the medium of this column. You may not know a lot about me, but you do know that I like my food. Why, I have alluded to this fact in this very column. But for the first time in my life, I was not able to finish my dinner. And the reason I couldn’t finish it is because watching Black Mirror is not for the faint-hearted, and I am a proud, card-carrying member of the f. hearted community.
I lasted through the episode, there is that, but I strongly suspect that this will be the last episode I’ll be watching where Black Mirror is concerned, thank you very much. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to like about the show. Excellent TV, to be sure – just not for me. Definitely not for me, thank you very much.
And so unless one of you lot can suggest some nice food based show to watch on Netflix, I’ll be taking my friend’s advice, and swotting up on my Wodehouse. That’s the kind of British creativity I can abide.
Toodle-oo, then, dear fellows. Pip-pip.
*The other one is, of course, the perennial, universal one. “What shall we have for dinner?”
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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