When I heard that a ‘best TV box sets’ feature was on the cards for this week’s issue (page 14, if you must), I immediately refused to get involved. I try to live my life as unhypocritically as possible, you see, so for me, telling the fair people of this city to go out and invest Dhs200 and weeks upon weeks of their free time in such a disappointing, unsatisfying manner was something I simply could not do. I told the boss that I’d rather mop out the office toilets instead and, with a big fat grin on my face, that’s exactly what I did.
I’ve tried The Sopranos. I’ve tried The Wire. I’ve tried Mad Men, with its slick suits and its tiresome ‘isn’t it weird that the world used to be really sexist and people could smoke at work and stuff’ schtick. And each time, after the first few episodes of barely anything happening, I got bored.
As a boy raised on Spielberg and Lucas, I simply haven’t got the patience for story arcs that take six hours just to get off the ground. And don’t give me that nonsense about ‘getting inside’ the characters. Like any normal human being, I’d get bored listening to a close friend or a member of my own family whinging about their problems for five hours straight, so why should I feel any different just because it’s Tony Soprano? Face it, people – these shows have been diluted to three times the length they should be purely to make a few extra bucks in advertising revenue, and you’re just being dragged along for the ride.
And then there’s the other line – ‘yeah, it doesn’t get going until the second season’. Okay, so let me get this straight. If I sit down and start watching The Wire right now, I’m still thirteen entire hours away from any actual, guaranteed pleasure? Well, I was going to go visit my dying gran in hospital, but since I can spend an entire day watching Jimmy McNulty stumbling about and looking through binoculars, while I cling onto the promise that something vaguely interesting could happen literally any hour now, I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that the old dear can hold on a bit.
The worst thing is, though, that refusing to sacrifice considerable chunks of your life to these plodding, drawn-out dramas means becoming a social outcast. You’re ostracised from conversations at brunches and pub outings because, instead of dedicating your Friday to finding out whether Totally Unlikeable Character #1 gets caught cheating on his wife with Totally Unlikeable Character #2 (spoiler alert: of course he does), you’re out and about in the real world – skipping through fields, smelling flowers and generally having a jolly good time.
So, while I very much hope you enjoyed the feature, (my colleagues did a cracking job, I’ll admit) I just wanted you all to know that I had absolutely no part in it. Oh, and if anybody’s in the neighbourhood and needs to use the men’s room, feel free – it’s absolutely sparkling.
