The Trouble with Auntie

I'm not quite sure what the ABC is up to lately. It's the Saturday and Sunday night line-ups which have me puzzled. The old Sunday night in with Auntie is a long established tradtion in my household—well, it was when I was a kid, and it is now that I am a conservative old man. An old man who shakes his head in wonder that what on earth Mark Latham thinks he's achieving with all this bile; and the same goes for Robert Doyle and his spectacular policy launch last week; and for those New Zealandish voters; and, and I'll stop now.

The way I see it is grey-haired types stay home with a certain amount of regularity on a Saturday night. Agreed? Whereas, plenty o' people of all ages stay home on a Sunday night, what with work eating into our Mondays.

So the ABC gives us Midsomer Murders of a Saturday night. Fine. My grandmother will happily sit down with a stable-table and a boiled egg to sigh about how wonderful the old days were and reminisce about the verdant joys of a village life she's only ever dreamed of, where there was nothing untoward about two ladies co-habiting, the vicar rode a bicycle and red lipstick was considered garish (and red shoes too, for that matter). Nothing new there.

And on Sunday night, my parents, who are only just starting to grey, get all het up over New Tricks, about a quartet of grumpy old has-beens (both as actors and characters) including a feisty, muttony Alison Braithwaite, solving cases. The attraction here is that the characters in this TV show are slightly older than my olds, so they can sit there with their Sunday night boiled egg and guffaw at the old klutzes, thinking "thank christ we're not that old yet!" Nothing new there—onscreen, or off.

Recently, this has been followed by Canterbury Tales. My mother doesn't even get Canterbury Tales. "It's, like, Chaucer, mum. Surely you read this when you were at school. It was published around then." But no, it's the washing up and an early night for them after New Tricks.

The common denominator of this is that the audiences for both programs enjoy a boiled egg while they watch. They are old people. And these shows are on different fucking nights. Who on earth in the programming department deep in the bowels of Ultimo (it can't have been anything but some vogue-ish Sydney decision) decided that it would be fun to stretch the gerry programs over two nights, and follow them—each of them—with shows that younger people can relate to? Nay, can sit in front of with a pizza and still go "cool", or "phwoar!" or even just "what's this then?"at?

So, why doesn't Auntie program New Tricks to follow Midsomer Murders—that way, the boiled-eggers of this world could have a jolly good night in with a few chuckles and "I don't mind if I do have a little whisky before bed, it is Saturday night after all". While those of us with less, let me say, quintogenarian tastes, could stretch out on the couch with a nice little reefer, a vegetarian with hot salami and a cleanskin red, in front of Hustle, followed by Canterbury Tales. That way we get 2 hours of quality entertainment, each of us, on our respective nights. And never the twain shall meet.

OK, so all of this is because I was actually in on Saturday night, and caught Hustle again. And it rekindled my weak-at-the-knees crush on Jaime Murray:

Phwoar.