Shows to Watch

Day after day, I hear about many new TV shows that are supposedly quite entertaining and/or funny. At the risk of sounding haughty, I've almost always had more pressing and important uses for my time than watching TV. Evenings are times to shuttle kids around, do odd jobs, repair and replace broken and worn-out house items or just take care of seasonal/holiday tasks like lawn mowing or general tidying.

There *have* been a very few shows that I've made time to watch, but even those ones have required a concerted effort to get in front of the television at the appointed time (usually just before bed on a Sunday night). When I sit down to take in Seinfeld, Sex in the City or one of the many other series that I overhear an office conversation about, I usually find them entertaining and I'm glad I found an hour to watch. In the past, I used to set aside Sunday night at 10 pm to watch a catty-but-fun serial called Desperate Housewives. Getting into the storylines and getting to know the characters doubled the enjoyment of certain scenes. For some reason, I fell off the Housewives bandwagon.

I'm quite pleased to see the production of season-in-a-set of DVDs, giving you a chance to watch a whole year of one show on your own time. I know that some people are getting Personal Video Recorders (or PVRs) to record satellite or cable broadcasts. These PVRs have a limited capacity and (I'm told) fill up rather quickly. That just puts pressure on you, as the queue of recorded shows quickly backs up into an hourglass-like funnel, waiting for you to un-stopper it. Having a DVD or two sitting on the shelf, waiting patiently suits my pace of TV watching much more closely.

The shows that I have planned to sit down and watch (someday), include Pushing Daisies; Nip and Tuck; Kath and Kim (the original series from Australia) and all the seasons of The Office that I haven't got around to. All I need is some free time.