If any of you watch Fox you should know that there is this new show coming out (BANZAI!!!) that lets you gamble and actually win or lose money! Is this another curse for chronic gamblers or just good clean fun?

More tasteless TV, shocking. I've seen commercials for this show, it seems wrong to me, in the ad, there were two men, one without an arm, and one without a leg, and they were competing in some event, seems kinda sick to gamble when those people are the participants, tasteless stuff.

CP

It looks stupid and I'm not going to watch it.

I argree with Conservpat, quality tv is going down the drain.

I'm guessing but this is either an import from the UK, or a US remake. The point of the show isn't the gambling - you cannot actually win any money unless you place bets with friends - but the daftness of the "challenges".

It's another example of the "dumbing down" of TV originating in the UK, along with "I'm a Celebrity...", etc. (Don't blame us for Big Brother - that was the Dutch.)

Although it's not as if the US is immune - the UK didn't invent the endless rota of daytime talk-shows where (mostly) stupid poor people parade their sexual and emotional inadequacies to allow a studio audience to shout at them. Nor did we come up with "Jackass".

The disappointment being expressed at how terrible and dim-witted most British TV imports into the US seems to be mostly predicated on your prior (false) assumptions of the elevated taste and classiness of the British, rather than any real decline in standards here.

If it's any consolation, a lot of people here don't like most of the tat that passes for television these days either, but (as in the USA) we're in a minority.

Fortunately, Julian, some excellent British comedies air on PBS.

Really Hugo? Which ones? I wish they would air them on British TV!

The schedulers always seem to give up the Summer as a bad job and show nothing but repeats.

I know it's a classic, but they repeated Fawlty Towers on prime time BBC as a filler during Wimbledon. They finished making that 24 years ago for Pete's sake!

I'd feel more comfortable if they repeated it alongside equally good new material. (Which is possible - just this winter there were two shows that were of comparable quality - Phoenix Nights and The Office) Although of course these are already being repeated, if only on cable. *sigh*

I guess this is casual conversation but Mr. Bean, Are you being served, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, and my personal favorite, Keeping Up Appearances all are on PBS.

Not much debate happening in this thread, so I moved it to Casual Conversation...Carry on...

It looks like you're several years behind on PBS. In which case you've got some good things to look forward to - especially Pheonix Nights, which for me is up there with Fawlty Towers.

I watch a lot of the BBC America channel, and I've been enjoying So Graham Norton, Coupling, and Absolutely Fabulous.

Admittedly I also have been watching a lot of British reality tv like Faking it, Changing Rooms, and What not to wear

I watched Banzai last night with chatterbox for lack of nothing else on that wasn't either a rerun or just didn't want to see. Well I should of watched a rerun. It was not only stupid it wasn't funny. I thought and chatterbox it was an insult to our intelligence. Geez where do these people come up with this crap? Guess I will just have to come to the forum for some intelligent threads and some good ole fun on some things.

I liked banzai. I thought it was funny. I also like jackass, and trigger happy tv, and real tv.

and reality tv needs to go.