There’s a strange new time-scale evolving on digital TV, which seems to exist in a universe not entirely contiguous to our own.
On Hallmark, for example, “Brand new to UK TV” seems to mean, “shown on Hallmark this time last year”, not to mention on Channel 5. It can also mean “shown 5 times over the past week but, hey! here it is again…”
Comedy Central, too, is temporally challenged – “brand new Two and a Half Men” on more than one occasion has meant yet another repeat of season one – just a week after they’d finished showing season one in random order, mixed with bits of other seasons. And they repeat the same random selection of episodes night after night after night, when they’re supposed to be re re re-showing Season 1. WTF?
Tonight, on FX, the loudly announced – and back-announced “brand new season of Dexter” was actually a repeat – again – of season 3.
Comedy Central Plus has no idea of chronology at all, and endlessly repeats random episodes of MASH, totally out of sequence, so that one week all the episodes are likely to feature Col. Potter – except one, which, jarringly, will have the long-dead Henry Blake.
As for the Sci-Fi channel, they seem to be locked into a Mobius loop of an endlessly-repeated selection of shit films. Damn small selection, too.
It does rather seem that if they’re not showing sport, and that sport isn’t football, the digital channels really couldn’t give a toss about what they show. So, is there a digital channel – excluding sport channels, and even those buggers show repeats, as if the result of a football match is likely to be different the second, third or 23rd time around – that doesn’t subsist on a diet of endlessly-repeated programmes? If there is, I haven’t found it.
