30 Days Of Telly #5

Day five, a show you hate. Oh, well this one's easy. Again there are several, but there's only one show that leapt immediately to mind, and made my brain recoil in horror at the thought of it: The Two Ronnies. As a child the theme music alone was enough to put me into a coma, and it would probably still have the same effect now, if I was fool enough to give it the opportunity. For anybody who has the good fortune to be too young/too not British/unconscious for most of the last fifty years, this was a sketch show starring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. I mostly hate it for its spectacular failure to be in any way amusing, but also because it's entirely possible that Ronnie Corbett may be the most irritating man alive. I don't have any scientific evidence to back this up, you understand, but trust me, his monologues speak for themselves.

It's funny, actually (thinking back, that is, not the show). When I was a kid, we only had the one room heated, so in the winter, you didn't want to be anywhere else but in the room that had the TV in it. This meant that it was very hard to escape shows that you hated. Times have changed, but the memory of being trapped in the living room with Ronnie Corbett's interminable monologues lingers.

I may have nightmares now. Thank you, meme.

30 Days Of Telly #6

Day six, your favourite episode of your favourite TV show. But we already established that I don't have one of them! *grumble* Still, I chickened out last time, so this time I'll behave.

It's not my favourite show (except when it is), but one show that has always been very special to me is Bonanza. It was on a lot when I was a kid, and the character of Joe Cartwright was a pretty major part of my childhood. He and Manolito Montoya, his opposite number over on The High Chaparral, were everything I wanted to be when I was growing up. I thought the world of Joe. And there is one episode of Bonanza which I discovered recently on YouTube - having not really had the opportunity to see the show in years - which just brilliantly sums up everything I used to love about it, and everything that made me think so highly of Joe. The episode is called "Different Pines, Same Wind", and it's the first episode of season ten. It really couldn't be more perfect. Joe is trying to protect some forests from a ruthless logging merchant (the Cartwrights were environmentalists long before it was fashionable), and in the process he finds a lonely old widow living in a log cabin. During the course of forty-seven minutes, he befriends her, saves her beloved forest, defeats a despicable bad guy, helps a doctor to rediscover his calling, and has a splendid no-holds-barred battle with a gang of heavies. Michael Landon was an accredited stuntman, and his fist fights were always awesome. Plus, as a special bonus, Ben and Hoss, the best father and big brother you could hope for, come dashing to the rescue to save the day at the last possible moment. It also has the nice blend of comedy and drama for which Bonanza came to be known.

It's wonderful, it really is. It's everything I loved about the show growing up, and Joe is every inch the hero I idolised so much as a child. So, even if it lacks the depth of a favourite episode of The West Wing, or the brilliant comedy-drama mix of a favourite episode of Buffy, I'm choosing this one. It's awesome. And, for the record, I still want to be Joe Cartwright (and Manolito Montoya). It looks like I always will.