TV Turnoff Week..

.. starts today. Now I don’t watch much TV traditionally, as in sitting in front of an idiot box waiting to be entertained, but does it matter if I’m watching quality programming on a mac? No no, I think it’s the same, they probably want me to turn that off too. This organisation aims to get people away from TV, which they blame for rising obesity and some other stuff. HIV maybe, I forget. and I don’t want to scaremonger. I can’t right a better response to them than that provided by the Guardian today, an extract of which you can read after the jump.

The enemies of TV also ignore the artistic ambition of shows such as Deadwood, with its Shakespearean monologues and broody philosophising. As the best TV becomes more like literature, “TV rots the brain” arguments look increasingly silly.

Yet still the squares persist. “Television is limited in the complexity of the story it can tell,” says TV-Turn-Off Network’s executive director, Frank Vespe. Frank should check out The Wire, a show scripted by novelists with devastating characterisation, multi-layered storylines and deep thematic concerns. Writing off TV this way is like dismissing films because you didn’t like Rocky V. This is the problem with anti-TV types: they are fundamentally ignorant of what they criticise, motivated by snobbery and puritanism. They are to be pitied, not feared. Now, where did that remote go?

wait, I’m a snobby puritan, and I love TV… can’t I be both? Gutted. Read more of James Donaghy’s musings here.