It's 9 am. Nobody in their right mind is watching tv at this time of day anyway. Make the mistake of switching on, though, and it's pretty turgid stuff. BBC Breakfast and ITV GMTV: anodyne celebrities promoting their latest anodyne projects; 'experts' opinionating on the subjects that someone somewhere has decided are what we should be concerned about; the usual dose of fear-mongering to keep us in our place. It's enough to make you bring up your cornflakes.
Alternatively, tune into the kiddies' channel. Mr Prank, Crazy Keith the koala, and Nev the bear are up to high jinx in 'Bear Behaving Badly'. If you're going to watch television, there's a case for majoring on children's programmes, some of them at least - if they don't involve puppets or cartoons, they should be regarded with considerable suspicion. The kids' programmes don't take themselves so seriously, and inhabit a less time-conditioned dimension than those of the adult world, where every day's news needs to be different, every day a move on from the previous. And all taking the great human project so tediously seriously. Boring...
'Bear Behaving Badly' is probably my favourite. The name itself is a play on 'Men Behaving Badly', a popular comedy series from the 1990s for grown-ups. Nev the bear, the star of BBB, actually embodies many of the qualities of the great Zen Master of Buddhist texts. Untramelled by the boring conventions of normal adult society, his behaviour mirrors that of Zen wisdom spontaneity: 'Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, crap when you need to'. And, it being kids' tv, 'when you feel the need, burp very loudly'. Despite coursing in spontaneity, he is far from naive, and sports a wily, cunning side, reminiscent of coyote. He frequently comes up with novel solutions to the problems that crop up (which they do, of course, frequently), thereby demonstrating a lateral, creative mode of thinking, with harmonised left- and right- brain functions. Ok, some of the acting's a bit crap, and one or two story lines are a bit thin, but you can't have everything, can you?
Rather more disquieting is the distinctly trippy quality to some of the programmes intended for really young kids. Maybe that's how our babies experience the world; or maybe it's a reminder to their parents of what they're missing, and an exhortation for them not to settle down too much. Whatever, it's all there. Take a trip into 'The Night Garden', for example. The pristinely primal colours - blues, greens, yellows -, cut-out origami-style trees and flowers, the weird, alien-looking beings with their bizarre names - Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy, the Ninky Nonk -, all reminiscent of the plastic doll world that Timothy Leary wrote about.
Or there's 'Lazytown'. Again, the preternatural colours (we also see them in the occasional Pre-Raphaelite landscape, but this is definitely not kiddies' territory) and wacky characters. There's Sportacus, hyperactive superhero on steroids; Stephanie, a pink-haired, dancing, jumping marginal pubescent; arch villain Robbie Rotten, a middle period Elvis Presley lookalike gone horribly wrong; and a load of bug-eyed puppets whose jittery behaviour suggests they all dosed up on amphetamines for breakfast. Totally surreal, probably not intended for kids anyway, and far more watchable than anything the early hours of the day can dish up on the other channels.
Alternatively, tune into the kiddies' channel. Mr Prank, Crazy Keith the koala, and Nev the bear are up to high jinx in 'Bear Behaving Badly'. If you're going to watch television, there's a case for majoring on children's programmes, some of them at least - if they don't involve puppets or cartoons, they should be regarded with considerable suspicion. The kids' programmes don't take themselves so seriously, and inhabit a less time-conditioned dimension than those of the adult world, where every day's news needs to be different, every day a move on from the previous. And all taking the great human project so tediously seriously. Boring...
'Bear Behaving Badly' is probably my favourite. The name itself is a play on 'Men Behaving Badly', a popular comedy series from the 1990s for grown-ups. Nev the bear, the star of BBB, actually embodies many of the qualities of the great Zen Master of Buddhist texts. Untramelled by the boring conventions of normal adult society, his behaviour mirrors that of Zen wisdom spontaneity: 'Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, crap when you need to'. And, it being kids' tv, 'when you feel the need, burp very loudly'. Despite coursing in spontaneity, he is far from naive, and sports a wily, cunning side, reminiscent of coyote. He frequently comes up with novel solutions to the problems that crop up (which they do, of course, frequently), thereby demonstrating a lateral, creative mode of thinking, with harmonised left- and right- brain functions. Ok, some of the acting's a bit crap, and one or two story lines are a bit thin, but you can't have everything, can you?
Rather more disquieting is the distinctly trippy quality to some of the programmes intended for really young kids. Maybe that's how our babies experience the world; or maybe it's a reminder to their parents of what they're missing, and an exhortation for them not to settle down too much. Whatever, it's all there. Take a trip into 'The Night Garden', for example. The pristinely primal colours - blues, greens, yellows -, cut-out origami-style trees and flowers, the weird, alien-looking beings with their bizarre names - Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy, the Ninky Nonk -, all reminiscent of the plastic doll world that Timothy Leary wrote about.
Or there's 'Lazytown'. Again, the preternatural colours (we also see them in the occasional Pre-Raphaelite landscape, but this is definitely not kiddies' territory) and wacky characters. There's Sportacus, hyperactive superhero on steroids; Stephanie, a pink-haired, dancing, jumping marginal pubescent; arch villain Robbie Rotten, a middle period Elvis Presley lookalike gone horribly wrong; and a load of bug-eyed puppets whose jittery behaviour suggests they all dosed up on amphetamines for breakfast. Totally surreal, probably not intended for kids anyway, and far more watchable than anything the early hours of the day can dish up on the other channels.
