h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm off work with some sort of virulent bug. I ache all over and my memory is like a goldfish's would be if it was true what they say about goldfish (and it isn't).

I've spent the day lolling about watching talk shows. I am very, very, very, very bored. When I remember to be .

I'm gonna lie down again now. With this parting observation:

Er....

Talk shows?! You must be bad. Allow me to recommend Thunderbirds (video or DVD). Just the theme tune is enough to make me foolishly happy. You probably have some other TV or film favourites of your own which would be an improvement on talk shows though.

Get better soon and, if you can't, then get happy for a while instead.

A few minutes of Trisha is enough to make me realise how comparatively joyous and sane my life actually is. It's like sitting by a crackling log fire with a mug of cocoa while a storm is raging outside.

The lie detector thing is a bit horrific, though. I can't always bear to watch that. Everyone treats the lie detector as though it's 100% accurate, and it regularly breaks apart relationships.

Fortunately for me I have no idea about this programme. You are not exactly a great advert for it either!

That's daytime TV for you . We've got digital TV, which means there's a whole range of channels that have nothing in particular on until teatime. Every day, there's a string of talk shows, one after the other.

People make their loved ones take lie detector tests on some of the shows, to 'prove' they're not cheating on each other. If the result comes back as 'inconclusive', it's invariably taken as a sign of guilt. The audience backs this by shouting and booing and waving their arms about. It's reminiscent of the Circus Maximus.

(Aren't you glad I filled you in?)

Well I suppose they had to be fairly dysfunctional to agree to go on the programme in the first place.

To be fair, a lot of people go on these shows for the entertainment value of kicking up a ruckus. In the American ones particularly, the guests know what they're getting into and treat it as a kind of sport. (A bloodsport, perhaps .)

Ah. I'm opposed to blood sports (and even contact sports).

I thought I was, too, until there was nothing else to do. Now I'm starting to get hooked on Judge Judy and the like, though for the life of me, I can't figure out why.

Do you think this is the start of The Slippery Slope?

Hopefully you'll simply get a bit better and go back to work before you get completely corrupted.

If it's the start of "The Slippery Slip" instead, then don't forget your cushion.

Thunderbirds, on the other hand, I can't stand! What is it about Thunderbirds that makes so many people rave about it?

Star Trek, I get: all those rifts in the space-time continuum; the dilithium crystals; the "what is this Earth thing you call kissing?"

But, Thunderbirds? I don't get Thunderbirds at all.

With Thunderbirds (for me), a lot of it is the music. Barry Gray was a top dude. Then there's the 50s-60s props (some of which I have the same/similar stuff!). The family values, saving the world and lack of kissing are all good things. I like other Gerry Anderson series too but I reckon Thunderbirds was the peak with a fairly clear slope downwards in quality on either side (too primitive and/or cringe-worthy earlier and too violent and cringe-worthy later). The cringe-worthiness of TB is just about right to make me laugh.

I like StarWars and the various incarnations of StarTrek and many other such things. However I find the kissing extremely cringe-worthy. Kirk is of course a complete pain - my ship, my crew, my series. One wonders why the females don't shoot him or run away at first sight and no-one in their right mind would be caught wearing a red shirt! Mostly I'm laughing at how seriously the Americans take themselves. I love the tribbles though.

Ah. So what you like about Thunderbirds is more or less what I like about Star Trek and Plan 9 From Outer Space .

I particularly liked (and cringed at) the evolution extrapolation program on the Enterprise's computer: it showed, holographically, the evolution of some lizard they found into a lizard-man. Watching that was another of my shouting-at-the-TV moments .

And I like the evil alien bimbos in their ridiculous costumes, who succumb to Kirk's portly charms.