Skins, Misfits, The Inbetweeners, Gossip Girl, 90210 and now Glee....you see a pattern here. These programmes either feature or are aimed at the teen demographic. It's really tricky to get teens interested in television full stop, with numerous distractions ranging from 'LOL' and 'SMH' texting to MySpacing and Facebooking their lives away. However, these programmes have managed to capture as well as maintain the interest of the young, cool crowd and along the way have picked up a few...well a load of...how can I say it - mature followers, myself included. With my age almost at that halfway point between the young and naive twenties and the 'yes-Mum,-I-know-my-biological-clock-is-ticking-30s, I find myself tuning to the antics of drunk-fuelled, sex-crazed, bitchy-drama-loving and ever so entertaining adolescents that grace our screens on a weekly basis.
So how have these shows attracted so many viewers who are old enough to remember when leg warmers were the ish the first time around? I guess you could put it down to nostalgia - they reminds us of a time when we didn't have bills to pay or have to put up with being under the armpit of a sweaty man on the Monday morning journey to work. OR perhaps it's because our society places so much emphasis on youth nowadays so we ended up living, or re-living our best years vicariously through E4. Look at me, 24 and I already think that i'm past it! Well not really, but it seems like that's the message the media and society pushes out on a regular basis. So if you can't beat em, join em. I'll definitely be tuning in to see what my adult life is missing.
I think the success of these programmes is due to the notion that once you reach a certain age, your life for the most part is pretty predictable - you wake up, go to work, complain about work, go home to a microwave meal and sleep. So watching these programmes takes you to a time when you had enough time to get into trouble, have outrageous fun and live & I find myself watching more youth oriented programmes than when I was that age!
ReplyDeleteSame here! When I was younger I used to sneak and try and get a peep of 'post watershed' television - it was all the rage in the playground. Now it's totally flipped. OR are there just not enough exciting programmes for people older than high school...when you pass a certain age do you really get THAT boring?
ReplyDeleteHaha I think you got it spot on with the point that we get boring when we get older, hence the reasoning for programmes like The Office and Peep Show (if you ever saw it) those shows poked fun at the most mundane aspects of life. I think the whole point of these youth programmes is to say (in the most innocent way possible) that you're entitled to a youth, whether girls, music or alcohol fuelled; its that final hurrah before you enter the boredom world which we're now a part of! So long as you reach that stage without harm, your youth is yours to enjoy/experiment with!
ReplyDelete