Saving television
Television is dying. I don’t mean my television specifically – rather ALL television. The medium of television. While there are some highlights – a few brave predatory fish swimming through the ocean of turds that is contemporary television programming – TV is on the way out.
I want to change that. So here free of charge* are some new and fresh programming ideas which I invite you, the executives of broadcast and cable networks and whomever else it is that decides which TV shows to make, to go forth and use.
The Boy Who Cried Wolves
A show about a boy whose tears turn into ferocious wild animals. Ostracised by his peers (which ironically leads to those peers being torn apart by tear-wolves) he travels from town to town solving problems and mysteries while trying to avoid situations which might lead to him crying. He cries at least once per episode, but not too many times more than that because I assume wolf-wrangling can get expensive.
Stay Buried
After years of working alongside an insufferably smug former ‘psychic’ (the quote marks indicate that he was not actually a psychic, but pretending to be one) a team of detectives snap, murder him and have to cover it up. In a typical episode they’ll be solving some other crime like a murder or whatever but there’ll be a moment when it seems like they’re about to be found out for the murder they did but then they aren’t found out and everything is fine.
New Zealand’s Next Top Dominic
Dominic Bowden (the guy from X Factor New Zealand who doesn’t sing or judge) and Dominic Harvey (the guy from The Edge radio station and notable Twitter misogynist) go head to head in a series of singing, cooking and modelling challenges. Grand final is a fight to the death. The winner is either bronzed or stuffed and mounted, then placed prominently in the TVNZ lobby (regardless of whether TVNZ is the network which screens the show). The loser’s name is changed posthumously from Dominic to something selected by viewers via a text poll.
Breaking Brad
This is pretty much exactly the same as Breaking Bad except instead of that guy from Malcolm in the Middle you have Brad Pitt playing a ‘parody’ of himself as he attempts to hide his meth lab from his wife Angelina Jolie and their many, many children (obviously it will have to be set in LA or wherever the Jolie-Pitts live).
Okay that’s probably enough free* ideas for now. But seriously I have like a million of these so if you want more then please do get in touch.
*Actually these ideas are pretty great so please don’t use them unless you want to pay me some money or something
If Dom and Dominic fight to the death, I think we are the winners.
Especially if it is a dead heat and/or draw.