Idea for a TV show: "Britain's Least Haunted"
Basically, Professor Richard Dawkins (check contract availability; otherwise Simon Hoggard) shows up at a house or castle which has a lot of colourful local legends, and then stays there overnight, and literally nothing happens except that Dawkins stares coldly into the camera and reads the temperature out every fifteen minutes. For eight hours at a stretch.
I am not necessarily anticipating huge numbers of viewers for this show, but it could be the backbone of a "Discovery: Atheism" subscription channel, and based on the observed behaviour of the book-buying public, I am pretty sure that quite a lot of militant atheists would be happy to subscribe to the thing and never get round to watching it.
Actually, this is the kind of thing that Joe Nickell or Benjamin Radford does in real life, so if there was anything like it on TV, they would probably do it.
ReplyDeleteYou make it sound boring, but it could probably be pretty entertaining if it was done like PBS' the History Detectives.
I'm interested in making profitable TV, not watchable TV.
ReplyDeleteUhm, what about the BBC?
ReplyDeleteOh, dumb comment above. Need to work on reading comprehension, but for some reason I can't delete it.
ReplyDeleteBut that's pretty much what happens on Britain's Most Haunted anyway. A bit of noise on the tape is the best they can ever manage. It's one big, long false dawn.
ReplyDeletecan't we sign hoggard up for jackass uk and taser him in the nuts a lot?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of something on the lines of "Reality Show Judge Idol", because surely to christ the talent pool of washed-up celebs capable of sneering at fat chicks is running thin.
ReplyDeletebelle: yes! I bet someone is currently pitching a show based on Hoggard's "Christmas round robin letters" franchise, and is getting turned down all over town because he hasn't realised that the magic element is Hoggard reading out selections from his books while getting repeatedly tased in the testicles.
ReplyDeleteHoggart, same as his rather more admirable father. Hoggard is the surname of a Yorkshire bowler rather more admirable than his replacements in the England team.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of something on the lines of "Reality Show Judge Idol", because surely to christ the talent pool of washed-up celebs capable of sneering at fat chicks is running thin.Thus neatly closing the loop, and also allowing Endemol to cut out the single largest line item still remaining on their programme budget - the presenters' salaries...
ReplyDelete"Reality Show Judge Idol"
ReplyDeleteAlready been done. It was called 'Blind Date'.