Dispatches from the North: Retrospective Part II

As I mentioned last week I am taking four weeks to look back at when I first started blogging about my experiences in Britain a year ago. Here is a post I wrote the first week that I was in the flat alone while my husband was at work on his Naval base in Scotland. It was the first of many weeks enjoying British TV.

Here is an Anglophile’s Digest excerpt from September 2008:

Jason was back at work last week and naturally the weather was grey and misty most of the week so I stayed in and got myself acquainted with British daytime television. There are a few notable things about British television. First of all, about half of the programs are American anyway so its really not that much different, with the exception of commercials. That leads me to the second notable thing about British television which is that there are fewer commercials. The main reason for this is that British television is not free, to watch basic television in the UK you must purchase a box which is ironically named a “freeview” box. You need to purchase this freeview box in order to get the basic channels from an antenna. Also, you must a pay an annual license fee which for colour TV is about £140 per year. So, given the cost of watching television it is only right that they have about 50-60% fewer commercials. When watching American shows a 30 minute show is normally only about 20-25 minutes long.

Another thing I love is how candid British TV is. One example is the introductions and disclaimers for television shows. In the US, a very serious black screen and a very stern man will warn you that a show contains strong language that might not be suitable for children and “parental discretion is advised”. The other night I was about to settle in to watch a bit of Sex and the City (which by the way isn’t censored here) and before the show a voice over came across and the woman said “This show contains strong language and some nudity, which lets be honest is the reason we watch it anyway!”

Since I wrote this post I have come to enjoy and appreciate British TV even more. All aspects of British TV from reality series to comedy are at a much higher standard than American TV. In the past year I have had the privilege to see some of the most fascinating documentary series. Two of my favorites are Stephen Fry in America, a six episode series where Stephen Fry travels the US in a custom-made London cab and visits each of the 50 states, and Billy Connolly Journey to the Edge of the World where Scottish comedian Billy Connolly explores the Northwest Passage visiting the Inuit tribes indigenous to the artic regions of Canada along the way. If you haven’t checked them out yet I would strongly suggest you do. They are absolutely fascinating and such an interesting perspective on the North American landscape and culture.

In late March this year we finally managed to get Sky TV installed. We had a hard time at first getting it installed since we live so high up and basically not a single crew we called over had a ladder long enough to reach our roof to install the Sky dish. It finally required a very agile satellite dish installation crew to climb onto our roof using a series of leaps from our neighbors more accessible roofs to give us our dish, but it was all worth it. I have seen American dish television networks and they are usually full of useless channels and you end up feeling like you are throwing your money down a rat hole. Although there are a few stupid channels, for the most part I have found the channels have great programming. There is so much to choose from I often find myself having to DVR a couple shows at once while watching another.

One aspect of British TV I didn’t touch on in my original post was the “+1″ channels on British TV. It is so simple but also so ingenious. How many times have you turned on the TV to find that you have missed the first 10 minutes of a show you wanted to watch. Well the +1 channels are to the rescue. Most of the basic channels also have a counterpart +1 channel that plays the exact same lineup only an hour later so if you missed the first part of a program you want to watch never fear, just wait  a bit and it will come on the +1 channel! Brilliant!

If you aren’t doing it already, check out the free videos available on the BBC and ITV and other British TV websites to catch some of the great programming available.