What Were They Thinking? The Hundred Dumbest Events in Television History

I've been going through the drafts folder of my gmail account. I found this book review, which might be of interest. It was actually an Amazon review. I still regularly dip into this book. I keep it in the staff room bookshelf at work.

Christmas is frequently associated with bad television, so it's quite seasonal, right?

This is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read! I read it slowly, to make it last, and I've often picked it up to dip into it ever since. I sometimes bring it to the supermarket or post office to read it in the queue. I love this book!

I heard about it on TV Tropes, a pop culture website that I read compulsively.

The great thing about this book is that the writer, David Hofstede, obviously loves television, and has spent a great deal of time looking at all kinds of TV shows. As he announces in the introduction, he is not an intellectual snob, and he's happy to admit to a liking for what other writers might consider trash. He doesn't dismiss talk shows or game shows on principle; if he trashes a talk show, a game show, or televangelist show, it's because it's a bad specimen of its kind. He really knows his stuff and he loves his subject.

I also liked the fact that he doesn't really have a social or political hatchet to grind. He's very fair-minded. He's rather more anti-censorship than I would be, but he even admits that some censorship is necessary.

But I'm beginning to make this book sound a little too earnest. It's a smart book, but it's also a fun book-- an awful lot of fun. I laughed out loud on many occasions when reading it. Hofstede is quite a wit, and he surveys these televisual car-crashes with considerable glee (although he is never cruel, and is even quite sympathetic towards many of the transgressors). Having said that it's fun, I should also add that Hofstede can sometimes write seriously, and I do like that. He's not permanently on giggle-mode. This is the tone of some "worst of" books, and it becomes very fatiguing.

As an Irish person, albeit one maried to an American, I found this book fascinating as a window onto US televisual and social history. I learnt a lot of new things, such as the nicknames of the various TV networks. I didn't know what a big deal some shows such as the Dick Van Dycke Show, Gilligan's Island, or The Brady Bunch were to Americans. I'd heard of these shows, but this book gave me a better knowledge of their standing in the USA.

I'd heard about many of these "worst moments" before-- Supertrain (a disastrous drama set on board a super-fast train), Coy and Vance Duke (the ill-fated replacements of Bo and Luke Duke for one series of The Dukes of Hazzard), and Chuck Cunningham (a member of the Cunningham family in Happy Days, who disappeared in an early instalment of the show and was soon completely forgotten).

But there's lots of other gems I learned about for the first time in this book. For instance, the Poopin' Moose, a bizarre but popular item on the QVC network (it was a wooden moose which excreted chocolate), the ill-advised efforts to remake Fawlty Towers for the American market, and Chevy Chase's quickly-cancelled talk show.

One thing I really like about the book is that it's not just a collection of dodgy moments from TV. It also includes trends and practices-- for instance, one of the "events" is the loss of so many recordings of vintage TV shows, which were frequently taped over by networks.

I'm as interested in the author's background-painting as I am in his main focus; for instance, the section on the Poopin' Moose includes quite an interesting history of the QVC shopping network.

Finally, a word as to why I find myself reading a book like this in the first place. Not only am I interested in the history of TV (which is in itself a huge part of social history), but I enjoy reading about the unpredictability of the creative industries. In a duller parallel universe, nobody ever greenlights a crazy idea, focus groups and test audiences always predict the reaction of the general republic, and making TV shows is an exact science. Thank God we don't live in that universe! 

Reading about catastrophes in the history of TV might be seen as voyeurism; taking pleasure in the failures of others and sneering at their misfortunes. But I think the joy we take in books like this comes from a purer source; they reassure us that the world is utterly unpredictable, and full of surprises. In a way, we celebrate the human condition by saluting its most hilarious mishaps as well as its most brilliant achievements.