The Dales

Over the last ten years or so many TV programmes have irritated me. Not the content necessarily, but the constant obsession with telling us everything that is going to be in a programme before we actually watch it.

Recently a series has begun on ITV called 'The Dales' - fronted by Adrian Edmondson, it is a gentle look at families that live and work in the Yorkshire dales, and could be a pleasant, undemanding programme to take us away from the stresses of modern life - but my blood pressure rises when we are shown a clip of everything that is going to be in the programme BEFORE the credits, then again AFTER the opening credts, and BEFORE the commercial break we are told what is still to come.  After the commercial break we are given a recap on what we have already seen, and are told again what is still to come. And the programme ends with telling us what we are going to see in NEXT week's programme.  This week I kept an eye on the clock, and we actually lost 10 minutes of a half-hour programme.

In some cases this format is counterproductive, because I have sometimes started to watch a programme, then seen that there is nothing in it that I actually want, and so I switch off. If the makers hadn't shown me what was to come, I would have watched the whole programme.

It is particularly infuriating in an hour-long programme, when 45 minutes in you are told what is still to come. Why?  If you've watched that far, you're not going to suddenly turn off because you don't know what is in the rest of the programme.

Then we have the more recent fad in dramas of showing us everything that is in next week's programme straight after the final scene and before the end credits.  If I'm watching a nice costume drama, I don't want to suddenly see the storyline of the next episode. If I turn off, then I miss the credits and sometimes I do like to see which actor or actress has played a specific part.  That's if they don't condense the credits so small that you can't read them, just so that they can show you which programme is coming next.  Now don't get me started on that. Do they think that we're going to switch off before a programme has even ended?  And what do they think theme music of a programme is for?  Someone has composed it, a director has chosen it to suit the mood of the programme, and yet continuity announcers simply speak all through it.

It's lovely when I watch a video that I recorded 20 or more years ago, and I am immediately aware that a programme begins with the theme music, rather than five minutes of the programme before the opening credits and music, and then when it ends - it finishes with the closing theme, you can read all the credits, and THEN the continuity announcer speaks.  If only we could go back to that, programmes would be much more enjoyable.  Programme makers and continuity should stop treating us as if we're all idiots, with the attention span of a gnat.