But evidently not a grammarian, otherwise he or she would have put a comma or equivalent in the title. If that were all, I don't suppose it would matter, but I found this programme symptomatic of much that is ghastly in modern television, that is to say since the days when I was young.
My criticism is that producers of virtually any kind of programme of a cultural or educational intent are convinced that we cannot be relied upon to take our information 'straight'. The content has to be slowed down, speeded up, packaged into tidy pieces, spiced and sprinkled with unnecessary interventions, and generally jazzed up in an effort to attract and hold the attention of a stoned or jaded audience. Personally, I can't think of a better way of ensuring that the audience is in fact stoned or jaded. This particular member of the audience was not so stoned as not to query the need to dispatch one of the doctors in question to the University of Virginia at hideous expense for an interview that could just as well have been conducted without leaving the studio in Britain.
Worst of all, there was the terrible compunction on the part of all five doctors to WALK ABOUT AT ALL TIMES, as though what they had to say was rendered more meaningful by virtue of the fact that they were pacing menacingly towards us as they spoke. This endless striding back and forth has become a feature of all TV documentary-type programmes in all countries, and it's driving me to distraction.
My criticism is that producers of virtually any kind of programme of a cultural or educational intent are convinced that we cannot be relied upon to take our information 'straight'. The content has to be slowed down, speeded up, packaged into tidy pieces, spiced and sprinkled with unnecessary interventions, and generally jazzed up in an effort to attract and hold the attention of a stoned or jaded audience. Personally, I can't think of a better way of ensuring that the audience is in fact stoned or jaded. This particular member of the audience was not so stoned as not to query the need to dispatch one of the doctors in question to the University of Virginia at hideous expense for an interview that could just as well have been conducted without leaving the studio in Britain.
Worst of all, there was the terrible compunction on the part of all five doctors to WALK ABOUT AT ALL TIMES, as though what they had to say was rendered more meaningful by virtue of the fact that they were pacing menacingly towards us as they spoke. This endless striding back and forth has become a feature of all TV documentary-type programmes in all countries, and it's driving me to distraction.
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