Out of Kilter

Three separate interactions with the radio and televisual world this past week have led me to the conclusion that I've been left behind by those who control what is broadcast - or possibly that I've been left behind by life.

First of all, I turned on ABC Radio National while I did the washing up and heard a woman telling me that on her programme last week she had looked at the fish knife and its involvement in fine dining and that this week she was progressing to looking at the whole concept of dining out. The discussion that followed left me gasping with amazement that such a piece of mind-numbing pretension could actually have been produced by Australians, (until now I'd been deluded enough to believe that we saw through nonsense more than other nations - I certainly had no idea that we were into 'dining', let alone 'fine dining', whatever exactly that is). Is there really an audience out there, eagerly awaiting this stuff:

Later I turned on the telly, to see what the national broadcaster was offering to cheer the exhausted populace midweek. This is what I encountered; apparently it is comedy:

Finally, I decided to watch a drama I'd read was excellent and ground-breaking and insightful and all the rest. When I got to this moment, I gave up:

As with the above so-called comedy, what I objected to was: a) the vulgarity of it; and b) the lack of warning to the audience before they were assaulted by extreme explicitness. Someone said, after having seen Clive Palmer twerking, 'Once it's in your mind, it cannot be erased', and that is how I feel having inadvertently been subjected to these two fine moments in the history of broadcasting.

Is it not odd that, on the one hand, we devote whole programmes to the role of fish knives in 'fine dining', while, on the other, we tolerate dialogue so graphic that it would make any kind of dining difficult for those of us with weak stomachs? What has happened to wit?

Or is it simply that I'm getting old?


P.S Someone's just sent me this, which seems to suggest that I am not totally alone in my reactions.