Please do not adjust your sets .....!

Did I mention how bad 'Summer TV' is here? Ugh ... ! From what I have seen so far, with a few exceptions which I will get to in a minute, it seems to consist largely of sit com repeats from 30 years ago (there's only so many times you can watch Everybody Loves Raymond), cheesy quiz shows, really bad dramas, interspersed every couple of hours with news programmes (with the same thing regurgitated on every channel at varying intervals).  Of course, if you are into sport, which I am not, then you can always find something to watch.  (To be fair,  I do quite like NBA basketball but that hasn't started yet ... sigh).

Mr B has been in his element this week as the NFL season kicked off on Thursday, plus he has found a channel showing UK football (I'm still refusing to call it 'soccer') from 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning, so he is as happy as a pig in shi mud.  When he is not watching sport he is either watching Game of Thrones or House of Cards on Netflix on his iPad, (both of which I gave up on after the first couple of episodes in Series 1 **yawn**).

Don't get me wrong, I am not in favor of us becoming a family of couch potatoes either, but I do like to sit down for an hour at the end of the day and relax with either a juicy drama - think Sherlock or Broadchurch or something to make me laugh ... like Gavin & Stacey or Stella, or even, dare I say it, some great reality TV - love 'em or hate 'em, you have to agree that Ant & Dec on I'm a Celebrity can't be beaten!  Oh ... how I miss British TV.   I did get all excited a couple of weeks ago when I saw an advertisement for Bake Off ... or as they call it here ... 'The Great British Baking Show' (what's up with that??) which was due to start here this week on the PBS channel.  Well, let me tell you, 'disappointing' doesn't even begin to cover it!  Firstly, I discovered that not all schedules are the same, and whilst in some regions it did in fact start last Sunday, it doesn't actually start here until next Thursday **groan**, but then even more annoyingly, after waiting excitedly all this time,  I then discovered that it is actually the series from last year in the UK (or was it even the year before ... it's the one where someone steals Howard's custard...?).  Outrageous!!  What a let down ...

That was the final straw as far as I was concerned and so I set about researching ways to access UK TV via t'interweb.   After a bit of faffing and trying out a couple of solutions  (Google Hola was decidedly difficult to get set up easily on all our Apple devices and couldn't get 'Watch UK TV Abroad' to work at all), I found an app called Tunnel Bear.  A couple of clicks and I was in.  Eureka!  BBC iPlayer here we come!  Whilst it is slightly annoying that we can only watch on either the computer or iPad (streaming via Apple TV was not very successful as everybody looked like they had nervous twitches!), it was really great to be able to get our fix of Strictly this week (especially critical now that Mr B and I are training to be the next Orla and James Jordan ... **ahem**).  I also amused myself greatly by watching 'Fried', a comedy series about the daily lives of the disgruntled employees at a London fried chicken shop, which was right up my street!  LOL.  Now I just have to catch up with Bake Off at some point this week ... **does happy dance**

One of the few shows that we have all enjoyed watching on US TV each week though has been America's Got Talent.  There have been some great acts - many worthy of being winners - and unlike the British version you don't have to suffer a whole host of the hopeless and desperate.  I guess with a country this size they must struggle to fit in all the genuinely good acts and so there thankfully there is no time to show any of the rubbish ones ... Hallelujah! This week is the final,  so we will all be watching the final 10.  My money is on Paul Zerdin - a brilliant ventriloquist, but then there is also Stevie Starr, the Professional Re-gurgitator (look him up on YouTube!), who, whilst completely gross, makes compulsive viewing (even if it's from behind a cushion in my case).  Oh yes, I should mention here by the way, that both of these acts are actually from ......... Britain!

Still, we are currently being bombarded with trailers for the 'Autumn schedules' ... not least the new series of Modern Family ... yahoo! ... so maybe there will finally be something worth watching at last.

Anyway ... on that note, think I might go and get the first episode of this year's Bake Off under my belt (which may have to be let out a notch or two by the end of the series!)

Thanks for dropping by and hope you all have a good week,
TTFN
Bev x