I as good as never do. Streaming, Tivo boxes etc. mean I never watch live broadcasts so there’s never any reason to flick around channels looking for something to watch.
Prompted by watching a movie that was a series of sketches designed to simulate someone channel surfing on late night American TV.
Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)
Comedy sketch film by two writers and various directors (most notably John Landis and Joe Dante).
Sadly it suffers from being made from weak material. You could see the concept for the joke but it was rarely fleshed out into an actual solid joke, or augmented with additional jokes. The invisible man sketch for example does nothing more than show a deluded naked guy think he’s invisible when he’s not. No additional jokes are added to it to flesh it out. It’s very disappointing. Some of the sketches didn’t even have a strong conceptual idea (Jack the Ripper was really the Loch Ness Monster is not only a weak idea, it’s the complete content of the whole sketch). Some sketches seemed almost without jokes (the spoof sci-fi 50s movie that is returned to multiple times could barely rub two jokes together). A lot of it was obvious and basic in a way that wasn’t good.
I chuckled a few times, mostly towards the end, but it was mostly flat and unfunny. It drifted by in an amiably indifferent way so it was watchable, likable nonsense. It reminded me a little of Mel Brooks who could be curiously low on jokes for long periods of time. There’s a lot of wasted potential here. Its obscurity is easy to understand. The strongest sketch was probably the funeral roast, and that was nothing more than okay. It’s a dud but it’s not terrible, and it has some minor dated 80s curiosity value.
PS Into the Night (1985) by Landis is on Netflix. It’s an interesting obscurity that plays like a big budget version of Something Wild (1986), and even features a cameo by the director of Something Wild.
TrypF says
..but what Amazon Women OTM does have is Don ‘No Soul’ Simmons, and for that I forgive it a hell of a lot.
bungliemutt says
No. I don’t body surf any more either. Not with my hip.
Moose the Mooche says
Body-popping… ohhh, rather too accurately named these days.
Black Celebration says
Yes I do. Last week I found a Chinese TV channel where there is a boisterous studio audience and teenagers on the stage.
Smarmy presenter guy is about 40 and asks the teenagers a series of questions. The audience reacts noisily to the answers. Emojis and animated reaction shots (like suddenly a teenager’s head might expand to a huge size to indicate boastfulness) – these are frequent.
Words and symbols scroll across the bottom of the screen like Wall Street screens and Batman-type BIFF! POW! (but in mandarin) stars appear regularly too.
I think what is happening is this. The teenagers (4 of each sex) all go for a date. They come back to the studio to talk about how it went to oily, smarmy presenter guy. The audience sees both sides of the story and the presenter takes the piss like Brucey.
I watched this for about an hour.
Locust says
Into the Night is one of a small bunch of films that I had on VHS and watched so many times I could practically speak the entire dialogue. Haven’t seen it in 25 years, barely remember the plot now! Of course, it also features David Bowie as a bad guy.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I suspect like a lot of people nowadays I don’t surf TV channels. I can’t keep with all the box sets and movies as it is….
johnw says
I haven’t done for years really. Probably the watershed was when I got a second VHS recorder back in the late 80s so I was able to pretty much time shift everything. Successive new sources such as when I got cable (only five extra channels I think) then Sky then BSB then Sky digital mean there’s some novelty about surfing but these days i find it hard to keep up with what i know i want to watch let alone looking for extra content.
My wife still does it though and its really annoying, I’m reading something, something on the tv catches my attention, I look up and the channel changes!
Black Celebration says
My mother used to do that! There’s a really good show on, everyone laughs – including her – and then it’s over to another channel because she’s curious as to what’s on the other. She never got how frustrating it was to everyone else.
Paul Wad says
Like most, I never watch live TV, as I record or download anything I want to watch. I’ve even made a favourites list of channels on Sky Q so I only ever check the same few channels for what’s coming up. If ever I do flick through the channels I tend to get quite disheartened at the amount of rubbish that gets shown on telly nowadays. And at any given time there is always either and episode of Friends or an episode of The West Wing on, and if I’m out of the room my wife always manages to find them.
Twang says
Never at home though in August we had a lovely week in the Peak District and the cottage we rented didn’t have anything other than Freeview….shock, and indeed horror. We watched “The Heat” with Sandra Bullock which I’d never heard of and who I am not that bothered about but it was a cracking film which we enjoyed enormously, so maybe rolling the dice sometimes is a good thing.
johnw says
I don’t tend to do it and I think it’s annoying but sounds of the shows we seek out now were only discovered due to my wife’s habit. I tend to look through programme listings and decide there’s nothing worth watching.