Incredibly boring programs - Starting with Ben Fogle

[EllyRoff]

BF lives in the Wild must be the most boring program ever made. Every episode is the same:

“We left the rat race to live in a cow shed in the middle of nowhere. We live on rain water and mouldy vegetables but we’re so happy”

Next minute the socially isolated kids are shown studying butterflies or some shit.

I just can’t stomach it, normally I can sit and watch anything but this just irritates me beyond belief, I have to leave the room whilst DH watches it. The only other thing that comes close is Jools Holland.

Anyone else have such a strong dislike of a particular program?

I will add that fucking programme only connect - possibly not boring but I find it too obscure and there’s a bit where they have to choose a question by naming the symbol - I don’t even know what any of the bloody symbols are except maybe ‘twisted flaps’ and even then I’m not sure that’s correct 😂
I think essentially I just hate it because it makes me feel exceptionally thick 😂 like university challenge 🫣

Any soap.
Any sport apart from football or rugby occasionally.
I don’t really like any Saturday night tv or One Show type shows.
Any news.
Gone off Bake Off, The Apprentice, Love Island, Masterchef.

All I currently like is a good drama, I’ve always enjoyed Midsomer Murders type stuff, The Traitors, some reality trash for mindless watching (MAFS all countries), Race Across the World, Stacey Dooley type docs.

‘Anything with Claire Balding’… 😅 I agree!
I met her once - nope!

I don’t mind Only Connect and University Challenge I occasionally get a question right. But Mastermind half the programme is dedicated to questions no one can answer unless you have been revising for months for 2 minutes of questions.

That's the point isn't it🤣
The specialist subjects are ridiculously random

But I like shouting answers at the tv and I can’t do that. 😆

True but at least you have the general knowledge rounds 🤣

I fo love the obscurity though
So your specialist objective is the life of peasants in some tiny little village in the Northwest of Scotland between 1235 and 1275 🤣

Oh yeah general knowledge is definitely the best bit

They had the Gilmore girls the other day and even after watching that serval time through got like 2 questions right. They do have some very obscure topics

Agreed.... he's my unreasonable celebrity crush 🤣

TV equivalent of bumpf through the door. Exactly why I tune out of some programmes that lure you in with the false advertising that they will be explaining something in depth (see my earlier post on the steroid epidemic that turned into a father and son talking about their mates at the gym and pub taking parcels from them and how they loved designer clothes - skip to the end...)

I used to watch all the soaps except Brookside, taped those with ads so I could fast forward. It hit me one day how utterly, utterly nasty, bitchy and horrible all the characters were and how you were only "someone" if you could totally put someone down and have the last word. This was over 20 years ago and I haven't watched a single episode of one of them since. I attribute some of the nasty behaviour we see around on the soaps

Saturday night TV is the worst ever, even with all the channels we have. How has the BBC sunk to the level of churning out game show after game show following up with the diatribe that is Casualty? Years ago Casualty used to be entertaining - when they used to have a 13 week run then have a break.

We usually end up watching Netflix or Prime

Netflix is a funny one as it is using algorithms to tailor what you watch and might like, yet it has suddenly given me an influx of a genre it calls "Violent" and a lot of Roman History/Male bashing each other rubbish. I don't know what I have watched to cause this but it's quite disturbing to see behind the curtain.

YANBU @Purplebunnie . About the same number of years ago, I realised thst I was watching Emmerdale, Corrie and Eastenders! every time they were on, which is a lot of telly hours in a week and, as you say, everyone was horrible to each other all the time. I think I'd reached maximum saturation point. Cold turkeyed the lot of them and haven't seen one since.

Ben Fogle’s semi religious/spiritual programme, I had the unfortunate experience of switching on to this the other day, banging on about community/spirituality. Crumbs.

George Clark’s renovations, when they send the owners off and set up the house to look authentically 50s or something, always horrible.

Pointless drives me nuts, could it be any more tedious?

I don’t understand the attraction of Love Island etc, but I have colleagues who think it’s amazing, Maybe I’m just too old?

Funnily enough I was saying to my husband last night when he wanted to watch Ben fogle that I thought he was getting too "touchy feely" and all these people who escaped had a lot of MH problems. I do love the scenery though.

Same here, 90s in 00s, we watched all the soaps..now none, although DH watches reruns on drama when I'm at work, his memory isn't great and doesn't really remember them. Never watched 'reality tv though.

I'm tuning into New Lives as I haven't seen Ben's beautiful face in so long. I can't believe he is married, especially to Marina. He just comes across as someone who would be attracted to a plant or tree.
What I hate about these type of programmes is the clear lack of reality for some people. I'm watching the episode where a couple in their early 30s bought land and an outhouse in Bulgaria several years earlier, despite never having visited or even knowing anything about Bulgaria. Their rationale: "We were both working full time in retail, and had two DC, and most of our income was going on rent, childcare, food and bills". Isn't that the case for most people?
So they bought their plot of land, with outhouse, but they are still living in a caravan because the outhouse needs a complete renovation. But it's all good, because the man is "self sufficient" - camera zooms across to a courgette plant and then shows him digging up his 'crop' of six potatoes.

This is partly why our birth rate is on the decrease - no one wants to be stuck working in retail for life with 2 kids and no home. They at least went all in with trying to do something new but depressingly we haven't kept the basic survival skills needed to do things like grow regular crops or fix rooves/build a shack. I think this is why trades costs keep rising - they know the generations who could fix things are on their way out and we are all too busy doing things like working in retail to do it ourselves and have not got the knowledge because we've been told corporate work is the goal for £.

You don't like Ben Fogle shows where Ben Fogle and people like Ben Fogle do Ben Fogle type things in a Ben Fogle way?

I don't mind them but the Ben Fogle titles annoy me, clearly lol

I hate the One Show. As soon as the titles start blaring I am diving for the remote. And shows like the repair shop, or that one at the dump are boring. There's loads of others not aimed at my age group that are rubbish, but they're not supposed to appeal to me so I let them go.

Well yes, when two teens choose to have 2 dc there obviously isn't going to be much time/opportunity to generate wealth, property and career prospects. They had a council house in Bournemouth, so stability that way, but as I'm watching on I'm remembering that there's always some sort of poverty/addiction/social reject sob story in these programmes and Ben is there as a middle class Jeremy Kyle, offering his gems of wisdom and empathy. The woman revealed that her mother had been a drug addict, she was adopted and had her own addiction issues too, which in Bulgaria had manifested in going to rubbish/recycling piles to collect things. Ben, then solemnly asks: "Do you ever think you and [husband] are rubbish?" Gosh, should have known it was going to be bad when there was a channel 5 warning of "upsetting themes".

The One Show is the junk drawer of TV, presented by the blandest, most vanilla, right-on goody goodies ever. Waste of time.

In terms actually being boring, rather than programmes that I don't like, I'd say Pointless and the 1% club. Once you've seen a few you get the jist of them.

The Traitors I cannot understand the fandom for. I watched one episode which consisted of small groups of people whispering, crying and whimpering in different rooms about other people and what hr or she might have said/looked funny at me/didnt actuallysay or mean FGS, pointless melodrama about nothing. Nope, do not get it at all.

I speak with the wisdom granted by age and experience. That early evening slot has been awful, 'God, switch it off,' since it was invented. No matter who presents it, no matter the topics covered, it's always been one to avoid.

Not BF kids! The kids belonging to the family that are “living in the wild”