The Dinner Party

Ok so I’m at this metaphorical dinner party (it has to be metaphorical as I would never actually go to a dinner party), and we are just finishing off the foie gras and swigging back the Palmina Alisos. Conversations linger over house prices and whether we might even vote Tory at the next election. But this isn't your average dinner party - the other guests are made up of television channels and they are a pretty awful lot.

Now ITV hasn’t been invited because she’s basically a bit common and couldn’t really cut it with the others round the table. BBC Two failed to receive his invite, apparently he’s rather boring and a bit stuck in his ways these days unless he’s talking about Newsnight or the program with the nasty entrepreneurs. Channel Four is hooting off as bloody usual, lecturing us all about bloody chickens and laughing at anyone less affluent than himself. From the way he keeps going off to the toilet I have my suspicions he might be a drug addict. He seems very cool, very worthy and very irritating. Five seems quite nice, but at the back of everyone’s minds we all remember a few years back when she didn’t know better and would get plastered and get her tits out at the end of every night, poor girl.

Sadly I’m next to the BEEB. BBC One seems to be in the midst of a mid life crisis and doesn’t have a interesting word to say about anything but is absolutely desperate to please everyone. He won’t stop banging on about his young nephew, Three, that he’s brought along to the party. All Three does is tut at anything said by anyone over twenty five and stairs nonchalantly out of the window, texting all the time. Thank god for the other member of the party. BBC Four. Intelligent, stylish but not too cool, and doesn’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child. I can even forgive him for putting Spiceworld on the other day. Step forward the only channel worth consistently watching on British Television.

In George A. Romero’s seminal zombie classic 'Dawn of the Dead', some of the survivors talk about a island where others have gathered to escape the zombie hordes. BBC Four is the televisual equivalent of this island. Unlike other channels that are obsessed with youth, with celebrity and with reality shows that portray nothing absolutely akin to reality, BBC Four still clings to some sort of Reithian ideals. It still tries to produce intelligent television that does not pander to stupidity so I can only presume its time must be numbered. Tune in while you can, and hail the last Bastian of this once great broadcast industry.