My British Grandmother’s Favorite TV Shows
My grandmother is 91. She is petite, always wears tailored dresses or skirts and matching high-heeled shoes with clear tights: “I don’t see how you could wear trousers. You shouldn’t wear trousers.” Her nails look like they are gilded in molten crimson iron.
Grandma reads the Daily Telegraph, and the Financial Times, and the Week. Grandma would vote for Obama if she were American but she told me to watch it: “because it’s for sure that he’ll get bumped off! You wait and see.”
But onto grandma’s TV shows. I thoroughly enjoyed them. There is Autumn Watch. Autumn Watch is the equivalent of National Geographic for wild animals in the city. There are squirrel competitions, to see how fast squirrels can walk a tight string to get to their food prize. There were pigs performing the tradition of “sparage” (maybe it’s called that), where pigs eat forest acorns so that grazing horses won’t get liver problems. There was a detective investigation of “who killed Mr. blabla’s white carp”: the murderer was a city otter. Following this discovery, Autumn Watch’s cameraman spent 2 whole nights trying to film city otters, in vain.
The show is hosted by a young blond woman and an older man. In honor of Halloween, he visits a cemetery and screeches when he hears banshees, vampires, ghosts etc… But he reveals a few minutes later that all those sounds are wild animal calls, the vampire’s cloak beating the wind was a white swan’s powerful take-off.
I showed MadTV’s 08 election montage to grandma: Fauxbama is interviewed by young Hollywood: “I think my girls believe that if I become president, they can eat as much candy as they please, that is not true …” or, in the 14th Seasons premiere: “Tonight I’m here to talk about hope and change, change and hope, changy hope, hopy hopy change, in other words … chope.”
Grandma’s response: “Is this supposed to be funny? (Grandma’s quiver rises an octave at the end of her sentences) There is a show I watch, that is splendid, quite funny although sometimes it’s a bit lude.”
The show is “I’ve Got News for You.” It’s 5 British stand-up comics sitting around 3 tables back-and-forthing jokes. Each episode is themed. On youtube, I showed grandma the one about “oligarchy.”
My favorite show is Stephen Fry in America. He drives around the whole of the US in a British taxi cab and comments on American landscapes and the strange people who live in them. (I’m actually really distracted by this cab, how did they get it to the States? Did they drive it? Fly it? Manufacture it in the US? Or does the US have British cabs lying around?)
There are a lot of scenes with American border patrollers. They remain impassive to all of Stephen Fry’s cheekiness: “America is the best country. You know there are some people out there who try to take advantage. We’ve gotta protect our country.”
In one episode, Stephen Fry walks into a trucker’s shop. “Look,” says Stephen, “here’s a bed for your truck, and there’s even a happy trucker in it, he’s got his thumb up and everything. Oh here’s another picture of a trucker with his thumb up.” And “My, I’m sorry I don’t mean to be inappropriate, but what are these? … Bull balls? (He is poking at a whole wall of multicolored metallic molds of bull balls) My … the American male, strange species.”
