92. 09.04.2012 Bank Holiday catch up

92. 09.04.2012 Bank Holiday catch up.

Not having a TV and having a mother-in-law to be stop  over on the longest bank holiday of the year doesn’t always have to end in tears. In fact it was rather enjoyable.

Luckily there’s catch up on ITV player. BBC do a catch up service too, but to be brutally frank if you’re from Leyland those programmes, with the possible exception of The One Show and Midweek Lottery Live are a bit too high brow.

I am now up to date with the goings on in Emmerdale and Coronation Street.  The last time I saw Emmerdale there was still a farm and the crux of the storylines revolved around Amos Brearly  exclaiming “Mishter Wilksh! put that away and adjust your  slacks”, Seth Armstrong ordering a pint in the Woolpack, or Annie Sugden doing an impression of Bugs Bunny whilst  bent over backwards over her Yorkshire range balancing a homemade casserole on one bosom and a nicely cooked leg of lamb on the other with the Reverend Hinton popping in for a serious chat about the  condition of his cassocks. For drama there were harrowing scenes of Pat Merrick narrowly escaping death from a smouldering caravan when the corner of a duvet got too close to a convection heater.   These days it’s a hotbed of sleeze and sex and there has been an influx of actors from all over the country. A sort of den of Equity.  Yorkshire accents are few and far between and everyone speaks in a generically bland northern accent, the type that minor characters and common people in black and white British films spoke in.

There  are even psychotic homosexuals amongst  the cow sheds and silage pits. Not the sort of thing that’s good for beef production to be brutally frank.

Over in Ambridge, it’s the same. The Archers have interbred with newcomers to such an extent that they all have either Estuary accents or are so far back that not even the Queen knows what the hell they are talking about. Tom Archer, that’s the organic sausage king for those of you who don’t know, talks like he’s got a couple jammed in the back of his throat with a couple of hot potatoes there for good measure.  Being a sensible and mature 40 something year old, I don’t snigger every time he mentions his sausage. Honestly, I don’t.

Meanwhile down at the Rovers, Stella Beale, -that’s Ian Beale’s ex wife from the other side - has resurfaced with an another generically Northern accent sounding far too “ey-up cock  there’ll be ‘t trouble ‘t mill ‘for day’s out chuck or ma nurme’s not Cindy Beale  petal” than is feasibly possible even in a thrice or four times weekly Northern soap.

Anyhow, for the last few days our resident ghost, Mrs Backside, who died in 1918 (fact)  and manifests herself along with her black cat in the dining room and on the bend in the staircase,  has had company and caught up on all the soaps with the exception of EastEnders.

Mrs Beswick doesn’t watch EastEnders as her hearing aid can’t cope with all  the frantic whispering. By all accounts it sounds like  someone rustling an empty bag of Quavers with a boiling  kettle whistling in the  background. Which to be brutally frank is preferable to the dire storylines  and the Estuary English that we are told we will all be speaking in 50 years time. But that’s my  brutally brutally  frank opinion on the topic.