What’s the best way to watch the ‘golden age’ of TV?

OOoh I love a debate like this. I take Kate’s point about The Wire, which I love. David Simon, who created it (and Homicide and many others) called it ‘LEAN TO’ Television – you had to concentrate hard to get into a world presented uncompromisingly – which as a fellow TV writer I LOVED. Breaking Bad isa masterpiece – an exploration of a man’s soul as it gets darker and darker – truly Dostoevsky in the desert. The Good Place is fantastic – a comedy about moral philosophy with heart – and has the perfect ending. And Schitt’s Creek is a gamechanger for LGBT + storytelling – a show in which you start off hating the characters and then totally fall in love with them – Alexis especially. A satire with real emotional depth.

I don’t pay £8 per month for Amazon Prime Video. Instead I pay only BRL 7.90 (£1) per month for it via my Brazilian SIM card. I used to have Netflix funded by my US Amex card, until the US price rose above the UK price, so I changed it to my UK Amex card, and later stopped it. With these video streaming services, the content is based on your IP address in the coutnry where you use the service, rather than the country where you pay for the service. So I get Amazon’s UK content at a Brazilian price.

I’m strongly against geoblocking of services and the charging of higher prices for the same service in wealthier countries. So circumventing the UK’s high prices for streaming services is very satisfying.

Repair shop generally has skilled unassuming people making a good job of putting a cherished possession of an ordinary person back in good order. There is enough detail of parts of the process to make it instructive, as well as entertaining. I watch it regularly.

On the other hand I am neither a fan of the self opinionated and rather sharp salvage hunter nor of some of the restorers who seem to indulge in a bit if bodging – although the upholster and blacksmith are among the exceptions, as indeed is the blacksmith in Money for Nothing. I watch these fairly rarely, usually out if desperation hoping something good may crop up. The general theme of taking someone’s discarded possessions and recycling them has appeal if only most of them were not turned into pretentious junk that is sold for some ridiculous – and suspicious – price. But then I’m perhaps a bit of a cynic.

I don’t have much time for television so on most days I just catch a news bulletin.

I wish it were possible to see the Nine O’Clock News from different dates in the past fifty years. Is such an archive available?

As a young teenager I was gripped by The World of Tim Frazer and would love to see those programmes again.

Radio is far more important than TV for me. I do enjoy watching wildlife programmes and documentaries. Most of the TV I watch is via iPlayer or occasionally other catch-up services.

I have an Amazon tv cube and my answer is download Kodi on it and also get a VPN, and amongst the addons you install you will fin d 2020 films and every tv show you can think of.

What do they mean “golden age”? What golden age? Today there’s nothing but absolutely abysmal garbage on TV, especially if, like me you’re forcibly confined to freeview because you can’t get a satellite signal because of dirty great FAT obstructions in the way, and even if I could get a signal I bet the only stuff remotely worth watching would be on premium channels only which I’d have to pay extra for. And today nearly all programming and advertising is made totally IMpossible to listen to because of the absolutely criminally INSANE obsession with absolutely intolerable brutal torturing and totally needless sound effects like absolutely insane skull piercing shrieking “whistling” and stupid moronic clicking fingers etc. and then there’s the absolutely dreadful reality programmes where there’s always someone arrogantly bragging about how they so enjoy their work and so on. The 80’s was the last remotely half decent era for British TV, after that came 1990 when the totally idiotic finger click and shrieking routines suddenly became such an obsession with producers which has only become even MORE of an insane obsession ever since. Then there’s all the programmes about “disability” when they NEVER show anyone even remotely disabled like me but instead only show the very tip of the proverbial iceberg, i.e. only the most elite, those who are so “disabled” but who can still go to university and then get a top notch job and who can still indulge in all manner of rowdy socialising and courting and marriage and frying HOT “holidays” etc. But never any mention whatsoever of anyone at the other extreme, oh no, they only ever go out of their way to totally deceive the viewers into thinking that all disabled folk use white sticks and wheelchairs and have such great lives and so on, what absolute total bull! Stuff like the “undateables” , and “without limits”, and the “disability paradox” for instance are totally unrepresentative deceptions. Honestly there was a far better choice of programming back in the 60’s when where we lived in plumstead we could only get bbc1on 405 lines in black and white only, anyone remember that? When TV’s took ages to warm up before they started working?