TV Dinner

I am currently sat on my bed in my hotel room trying to do some work but really with more than half an eye on the TV. Watching TV in India is a surreal experience. There are a lot of news channels, in both English and Hindi - I have just counted and there are 11 channels of news, which seems a bit excessive. These include BBC World, which is always quite comforting to watch as all the presenters are very familiar from BBC News 24. Then there are a lot of film channels - everyone loves movies in India - and as well as Hindi moves there are also 4 channels of Hollywood movies. What with this and the films on the plane I have seen more movies in the last 6 months than I probably have in the last 3 years! The only annoying this is that they repeat them more often than the Christmas Schedule in the UK - I have now seen First Knight 3 times, while ELF and The Grinch seem to be on constantly (even when it's nowhere near Christmas). I have also managed to watch Big, Spiderman, Independence Day, 50 First Dates...and lots of others that have obviously made less of an impact as I can't remember them.

Other than Movies and News there are also 3 or 4 channels that show American and British comedy and drama series. Watching Midsommer Murders is always the most surreal as it is so quintessentially English that it seems a bit wrong to watch it anywhere else. But you can also watch The Simpsons, Scrubs, Seinfeld (yuk), Cheers, Frasier, Wire in the Blood, Spooks, Ghost Whisperer (which is my new favourite programme - Amanda, I think you would like it), Friends, Commander in Chief, American Idol - all sorts of rubbish. When I was in hospital I had a channel where I could actually watch America's Next Top Model but due to the somewhat idiosyncratic nature of things in India I had a better selection of TV channels in hospital than I do in my 5 star hotel... The other thing which is pretty good about TV here is VH1. They play only English music and they come up with some quality videos that I have never even seen before!

But the reason I am really writing about TV is that I am currently looking at England play New Zealand in the Cricket World Cup. Just seems really random that I am more than 4,000 miles from home but I can listen to Michael Atherton commentating on the cricket. And I can watch Reading play in the Premiership - I can't even do that at home! Weird adverts pop up all the time however, and programmes are always sponsored by about 12 different products that all have 3 second voice overs before the programme starts. And in the cricket has pop ups depending on what's happening. A wicket's just fallen? "Santro - First Car that Bowls you over". Good score? "LIC - 50 years unbeaten". It's quite distracting! I guess I'm just missing the BBC after all...