There was a time when television was something to look forward to. A rare treat. A shared moment in a family living room. Now? Modern TV is a non-stop conveyor belt of brain rot, Botox, and barely disguised breakdowns.
Soap Operas: Death, Divorce and Dial-a-Cliché
Let’s start with the sacred cows of British telly: Emmerdale, Coronation Street, and EastEnders.
Three shows. One genre. Thousands of hours of people receiving phone calls, going to the corner shop for a tin of spam or the day’s newspaper three times per episode (have these people not heard of Tesco?), and repeatedly marrying, divorcing and remarrying each other, steadily reducing the local gene pool to something that would make a family tree look like a tumbleweed.
And how do you make any of that dramatic? Easy — you throw in a murder every 4 weeks.
Corrie alone has more bodies per square metre than a war documentary. It’s a miracle there’s anyone left on the street. You can’t even pop out for a pint of milk without being framed for fraud or finding a baby on your doorstep.
And yet, older viewers cling to them like lifebuoys, living their lives to the beat of the EastEnders theme tune. Entire routines are built around soap timings, like pensioners are being paid by the BBC to monitor fictional trauma in real time.
Reality TV: Botox and Beige Brains
Then there’s the true horror of the modern age: “reality” TV.
Fake people. Fake tans. Fake drama. Real waste of time.
We’re talking the Love Islands, the Too Hot to Handles, the “I’m attractive, unemployed, and deeply insecure” genre.
And who are these reality stars?
A collection of gym memberships, filler injections and sentences that would make a GCSE English teacher cry. They don’t do anything. They don’t build anything. They don’t know anything. But by God, they’ll cry on camera about the time their protein shake exploded.
Give them five minutes of airtime and they’ll ride the circle-jerk carousel of guest spots, fake interviews, charity dance-offs and TikTok endorsements. All until someone finally asks the question we’ve been asking since episode one:
“Who even are they?”
Quiz Shows: From Idiot-Proof to Universally Challenged
Some quiz shows are so easy you expect the buzzer to sound like a squeaky toy.
Let’s be honest: that’s just to make sure the ex-reality TV guests score at least one point, while trying to spell “cat.”
Others — University Challenge springs to mind — are so impossibly difficult you’d need three PhDs and a cheat sheet just to understand the questions.
I call it Universally Challenged, because the contestants are either doomed to a life in academia or heading straight into politics, where they’ll spend a lifetime taking 10 minutes to avoid answering a yes/no question.
And socially? Half of them couldn’t hold a conversation with a lamppost.
Viewers at home aim to get three questions right per episode, then strut around like they’ve just passed the bar exam.
Phone-In Talent and Celeb Competitions: We’re All the Losers Here
Enter the final circle of TV hell: the phone-in competitions.
Britain’s Got “Talent”, Strictly Come Dancing for Rent-A-Faces, I’m a Loser, Get Me Out of Here — all designed for maximum tears, glitter, and fake humility.
These shows are populated by talentless nobodies, washed-up celebs, and reality show spill-off who are held together by little more than hairspray and misplaced confidence.
You, dear viewer, are then asked to pay actual money to vote to keep them in — so they can sob some more, shuffle through another performance, and give an emotional interview about how they’re “doing it for Nan.”
The presenters do a bang-up job building drama out of absolutely nothing. The suspense! The long pause! The dramatic lighting!
And yet, it’s all 100% fake, 100% fixed, and 100% designed to make money off your desperate little phone vote.
Final Thought (Before I Throw the Remote)
We’ve gone from groundbreaking dramas and clever comedy to scripted sob stories, D-list narcissists, and quiz shows dumbed down for the Instagram generation. And yet we keep watching — either out of habit, boredom, or because the batteries in the remote have died.
Somehow, we even have a show where we watch other people watch TV.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Gogglebox. A nation of armchair critics watching a nation of armchair critics. At this point, the recursion is so strong we may as well start reviewing Gogglebox reviews of Gogglebox.
Modern TV isn’t a wasteland. It’s worse: it’s a landfill of nonsense we’ve all contributed to — and then sat on the sofa moaning about it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pitch a show where strangers argue over who can spell “intelligence” without help. Spoiler: it’s not getting renewed.
