The Telly

When we were talking about the move to London, one of the things I declared was that I wanted to go more digital and have less stuff. This meant breaking my addiction to shiny plastic circles of various forms, as well as shifting even more towards the Kindle from books. It also meant that I was finally going to figure out how to make streaming work for us. With that in mind, we decided not to get cable and just go with streaming, some form of netflix-like service, and broadcast TV.

The last of those takes the form of Freeview in the UK. Freeview is almost indistinguishable from basic cable circa 1990. We have a few BBCs , a half dozen home shopping channels, a TLC-like channel that actually shows the more historical/learning stuff (rather than all the reality dreck on there now), and a handful of channels that mostly show repeats of old US and UK sitcoms and crime dramas. The Brits love the panel show, wherein a series of comedians get together and talk about the news or other trivia. Some are very enjoyable (QI) while some are just baffling (we caught one last week where the guests were doing arithmetic. On TV. For entertainment.)

Given the fairly limited lineup, the most fascinating bit of watching is often the ads. We haven't seen any US ones that I can recall and even the ones for US companies often have a local spin.

One very odd example of localization is the "Mom's New Boyfriend" McDonald's ad. It tells the story of a boy whose mother's new boyfriend moves in. The boyfriend tries to befriend him but he is having none of that. Finally they bond over McDonald's fries and all is better. I just can not imagine this ad running in America, even though we have our share of single mothers.

Another interesting group of commercials is those done by significant US stars. Kevin Bacon spouting non sequiturs while getting a spray tan? We got it. Yoda selling wireless internet? We have that too. Bruce Willis in a bathrobe shilling for broadband? Sure thing. I knew that there was a bit of a trend for this (see Lost in Translation) but it's still odd to experience it firsthand. There is a real aspect of "is that...no, no it can't be" to it. The Yoda one is pretty funny, though I can't find it on youtube, sadly.

For now, we are remaining steadfast in our not-paying-for-cable ways. I'd like to not pony up for it, though the streaming feels fairly limited here especially since we can't get Hulu or most other US-based sites. I am told there are ways of spoofing a US IP address, and I certainly know many folks who go outside the law for these things both in the US and the UK, but for now my respect for Intellectual Property and Mary's general law-abiding attitude are holding out.