{"id":7038,"date":"2019-11-25T19:25:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T19:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7038"},"modified":"2019-11-26T08:43:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T08:43:43","slug":"the-box-of-delights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7038","title":{"rendered":"The Box of Delights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Poltergeist\/ekathimerini.com\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s often said that no one goes to their grave wishing they\u2019d\nspent more time at work \u2013 the inference being that what you would regret is not\nhaving spent more time with your friends and family. Somewhat damningly, I\u2019ve\nrealised that what I\u2019ll regret is not not having spent more time watching\ntelevision \u2013 mostly on account of spending time with a young family\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of my mother\u2019s job, we had a television from my\nearliest years, and it was watching an ur-science programme (long before the\ninvention of the Open University) with mesmerising grey blobs drifting own the\nscreen to illustrate viscosity, and talk of \u2018liquids\u2019, that moved me to name my\nbeloved teddy Mr Lickwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was brought up on all the classics: Bill and Ben<\/em>, The Woodentops<\/em>, and \u2013 surely the greatest of these \u2013 Muffin the Mule<\/em>. How easy the BBC made life for parents: the end of children\u2019s hour was indisputably time for bed. When I got older, it was futile for me to beg to watch Dixon of Dock Green<\/em> after Dr Who<\/em>. Dr Who<\/em> was children\u2019s television; Dixon<\/em>, with its cast of petty criminals and women who were no better than they should be, was not \u2013 ergo it was bedtime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there were horrors enough on children\u2019s television already, without aspiring to the adult ones. I was traumatised by the madwoman\u2019s fire-setting rampage (in black and white!) in an early adaptation of Jane Eyre<\/em>, and Dame L and I were scared witless by an ITV serial called The Blackness<\/em> that no one else I know seems to have heard of. Thank heavens for Internet Movie Database, which has confirmed that it was a thing, not just some bizarre folie \u00e0 deux. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel privileged to have witnessed countless real-life events\nthat I could never have been privy to any other way: Nelson Mandela leaving\nprison, Princess Diana\u2019s funeral \u2013 not that I\u2019m a royalist, but the occasion\nmarked a decided shift in the way we see ourselves. And then there\u2019s David\nAttenborough. Even if there had never been programmes other than his documentaries,\ntelevision would have justified its existence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thora Hird\/BBC Two<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Acting on television achieves an intimacy that is impossible on the big screen or the stage \u2013 often it\u2019s just you on the sofa face to face with them. Sadly these performances are not always rewarded as they should be. Where was the BAFTA for Ray Winstone\u2019s tour-de-force in Sweeney Todd<\/em>, one moment tenderly crafting a wig for the syphilitic Mrs Lovatt, the next frenziedly butchering a hapless punter? Alan Bennett has also exploited television\u2019s capacity to get up close and personal in his Talking Heads<\/em>, resulting in stupendous performances from a clutch of fabulous women: Patricia Routledge, Thora Hird, Julie Walters, Eileen Atkins and Stephanie Cole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As catch-up TV, subscription channels and streaming became popular, there were laments that with audience fragmentation the unifying aspects of TV had been lost. Where were the water cooler moments now? It\u2019s true that audience figures will never reach the dizzy heights they did in the days of a two-channel monopoly, but the water-cooler is alive and well on Twitter. What fun (if you have the mental bandwidth, which I don\u2019t) to tweet along to a riveting serial, but beware of venturing on to Twitter if you haven\u2019t watched the latest episode in real time \u2013 there\u2019ll be spoilers at every turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So excuse me if I don\u2019t answer the door or pick up the\nphone: I\u2019m making up for lost time \u2013 square-eyed and blissed out in front of\nthe box.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was traumatised by the madwoman’s fire-setting rampage . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,58,182,55,53,72],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7038"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7058,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038\/revisions\/7058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}