John Butleron the life aquatic
It seems to be universally acknowledged that there's nothing good to watch on television any more. The TV listings are dominated by American soap and forensic drama. Upon flicking through the channels, it's like a military junta has overthrown every government and installed Jimmy Nesbitt as our leader. Many people seek refuge in televised sport, glued to anodyne football matches played in the pursuit of meaningless cups, rather than watching that one guy from Friends high-fiving that other guy again.
Gone, for the most part, is appointment-to- view television, when we would sit down together at the same time, to watch JR get shot. Less frequent too, are the shows we all watch at different times, like The Sopranos and The Office. Though the big networks try to seduce us with billboard campaigns and kinetic on-air promos with sports-rock soundtracks, it's hard not to suspect that the ads themselves are of far superior quality to the actual shows, that they are merely polishing the turd.
There is a "major-channel-only" mindset at play here, a mindset that fails to acknowledge just what digital television is doing to the landscape. There's a world of specialist shows out there, just begging to be discovered. They may not have the taut plotting and high production values of other shows, but it's simply a matter of broadening your palate. In my opinion, television is about escape, and if CSI Miami is a weekend in Mosney, I would now like to serve up to you the luxury cruise that is Super Yachts, playing on Discovery from now until . . . the end of time, probably.
The show is narrated by someone who sounds like Robin Leach, the voice of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. This is no coincidence, nor is the fact that the ads are for Rolex and Lexus. It may sound uncomfortably surgical, but in marketing-speak, this programme is all about delivering blue-chip eyeballs. I haven't the faintest idea what my eyeballs are doing there, as I can't afford to buy anything advertised in the commercial breaks, but I'm pretty sure that I want to live on Aristotle Onassis's yacht, the Christina O.
The yacht has everything - snooker tables, Steinway pianos and at least 200,000 bedrooms. The bar is hewn from centuries-old mahogany. Sinatra has elbowed up to it and scooped alongside countless leather-faced captains of industry. They have all toasted Jackie O with pre-dinner lowballs served in cut-glass tumblers. The bar stools bear covers fashioned from whale foreskin, a notoriously difficult material to source.
This is perfect television. You lay on the couch on a Monday evening and calculate exactly how much money you'd need to earn before the idea of buying a yacht (let alone upholstering the bar stools in this way) becomes anything other than a joke. I say a joke, because the extent of the wealth involved here has an absurd, comical quality. To be fair, the comedy of this kind of money - and of a TV show like Super Yachts - is probably lost to the owners. After a certain point, there's nothing funny about that amount of cash.
Back on the yacht, the centrepiece of the main deck is a swimming pool with an intricate Hellenic mosaic shimmering on the floor. In the morning, Ari Onassis would throw in live lobsters for his guests to select later. I can see the tuxedoed men and gowned women pointing down and shrieking at their meals-from-the- deep. And after dinner, while Maria Callas serenaded the guests, the water would be drained from this pool and the mosaic floor would rise up and convert itself into a dance floor.
Swimming pool-cum-dance floor. I'm not kidding. Do spare a thought for the lone rejected lobster who now finds himself in the middle of an outdoor nightclub without any water to lean on. Can you imagine his shame? He scuttles towards the bar with all eyes on him, feeling twice the salty sting of rejection. Not only was he overlooked for dinner, now he has no dance partner, either. The lobster stops at the bar. In the time-honoured tradition of blokes rejected around the world, he just wants to drown his sorrows, but those bar stools. They're familiar. There's something unusual, almost obscene about them . . .
Of all media, television is still the best window into a foreign world, and tells us things about ourselves that we hardly knew before. I never pay any attention to astrology, though I am aware that my star sign is Cancer. But idly watching Super Yachts, I found myself thinking about Cancer, the crustacean, again. From Ari's yacht, we had been transported to the yacht of a couple from Idaho. On their rear deck there is a button which, when pushed, transforms the surface into an astroturf fairway, at the centre of which a rubber tee rises like the Lady of the Lake, proffering a pristine new golf ball.
A hapless deckhand has already been stationed at sea in a speedboat to place 18 mini-greens at distances from 100 to 400 yards. The deck-hand watches resentfully as his master swipes arthritically at the balls. Obviously, there are no second shots in this form of golf - closest to the pin wins, and each ball, once struck, is lost to the ocean forever.
I watched this in horrified amazement. I mean, what was the owner doing, wasting money like that in a world where so many have so little? Don't get me wrong. I'd take the money in a heartbeat. I just wouldn't spend it that way. TV tells you things about yourself, and not for me the Super Yacht scene. I found myself identifying with the crabs scuttling across the ocean floor instead. How they must have stared up at these plummeting white globes in wonder. Would they later tell their friends that it had been raining golf balls the size of hailstones?
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com
