General Chat

A drastic thing has befallen the Canadian viewing audience.

BBC Canada* has stopped showing East Enders as of Friday (when I managed to tape a 9-yr-old episode of Antiques Roadshow) until September.

* "BBC Canada" is actually a specialty channel here, owned by a series of Cdn television companies, that started out, like most specialty channels licensed by our fine Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission (which we also have to thank for expensive cell phones and slow broadband), broadcasting interesting and otherwise unavailable content ... and has ended up, like the rest of them, full of schlock consisting of endless rude chefs, endless stupid people needing their houses sold or dredged, and a load of Canadian programs (similar in nature) readily accessible elsewhere.

It must be time for the annual airing of Judge John Deed, and East Enders just had to go, to make room.

Actually, we're getting Antiques Roadshow every day at noon and four and eight and midnight (I'm not kidding), Top Gear as many times a day, and oh look, Cracker, just for those who missed it 20 years ago ... and Black Adder and Fawlty Towers, for those who weren't born yet ...

I guess we Canucks are just too busy with our summer schedule of hanging out in the woods getting eaten by blackflies to stay current with things like East Enders. Or "BBC Canada" is in a credit crunch.

Weep for me when you have a moment. And do *not* start telling me what happened after the ugly baldy man's wife had her birthday party and he took her kids -- although you can tell me what happened at the birthday party, the second last episode we got, because No.1 "forgot" to set the VCR while he was watching FIFA on Wednesday morning.