Incongruity, Immanuel Kant once observed, is an essential element of humor.

Well to me it [country music] is soul music.  It’s probably white man’s soul music.  And it comes from the heart. — Kris Kristofferson from Country Music (2019) in Episode One: ‘The Rub’ (Beginnings-1933)

A few years ago a colleague suggested that I watch an unusual television programme about people watching television programmes. Obviously, such a description didn’t initially tempt me to spend my valuable leisure time observing a bunch of boring strangers make silly comments about this week’s programmes. I’m more than capable of doing this myself.

There is a lot of talk about mental well-being at the moment, and it’s great to see that we also contribute to this, not least Kerr Castle in his recent blog, based on his PhD, on comfort television. I saw Kerr present last year at the Critical Studies in Television conference, and it really triggered something in me – suggesting that this is something I at once recognised and felt I needed to think more about.

What could be simpler than a week without TV? The idea of avoiding television completely – whether on a TV set, computer, tablet or mobile device – sounds like a straightforward, perhaps even liberating, challenge; and, in many ways, it was.

When I started working for the soap operas production industry in Portugal I was always a little bit afraid of talking about it with my friends and family. No particular reason for that…just a strange feeling that I was part of something terrible: low quality television content for the masses, rubbish television. I started working mostly in production, but I later moved to something even more daunting: selling soaps!

The broadcast schedule has been much on my mind of late – and not just because, at the time of writing, it has recently experienced two disruptions: one comparatively minor, and the other guaranteed to send shockwaves down the spines of all ITV daytime viewers.

How to write about a television programme that you love and that has even moved you to tears? Many years of teaching Film and TV have not really prepared me for this. In the eighties, when I first started teaching, we were largely in the grip of the Screen journal pleasure is suspicious era. (Indeed at PCL it was pretty much required as a critical approach on the MA Film &

First of all, let me start with a personal note. I am a compulsive organizer. My desk space in reality may not demonstrate this, but my actual (!) desktop, the real one I use disconnected from any material spaces is VERY neat. Just a handful of folders on either side of an artistic drawing of a lady with a TV for a head.

In the Summer of 1994, it became legal for shops to open on Sundays. Until then, the British Sunday could be a dreary affair because shops were closed, as were all cinemas, pubs and other places of entertainment. The comedian Tony Hancock made tragi-comedy out of this in his “Sunday afternoon at home” radio episode of 1958, for example.