Sunrise

Stuff has changed. You’ve not seen all of it yet, but trust me when I say to you that it has. The depth of that shift will slowly begin to show.

Let’s begin.

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There’s been much excitement in this house over Christmas thanks to Netflix, and the Amazon Fire stick we’ve had for a year and hardly ever used. I have a fair amount of Netflix content I wanna work through (and I will) but for now, you need to have the Amazon service enabled to truly appreciate the horror I am about to share. Well, that’s not strictly fair, because… well, you’ll see.

Welcome, one and all, to Kitten TV.

If you are familiar with the movie Scrooged, you’ll know there’s a point where rodents appear in Bill Murray’s seasonal adaptation of Dickens’ TV adaptation in attempt to get dogs and cats to engage. Well, this series of six shows does the about face, using kittens as a means to hook a generation of people (presumably) addicted to cute kitten videos and GIFs via the Internets. The concept’s ridiculously simple: build a set with a perspex fourth wall, drop a load of kittens into it, comedy ensues. There’s a Minecraft set, and an entire episode dedicated to cats in hats. I kid you not.

Back in the 1990’s, in the early years of satellite TV in the UK, there was a TV channel up in the 300’s that showed nothing but a roaring fire overnight. There was another channel that just showed beaches and boardwalks. This is no different, in effect, to the years when TV didn’t happen 24/7 and there’d be Public Information films to fill the gaps. Back when BBC2 tested colour movies, I can remember watching slices of history that are now so jaded and bizarre they feel like a dream, or part of the past that simply never existed. Fortunately, the Internet’s beginning to fill in these gaps, and the movies of my past can still be a part of the present.

Having found a list of the BBC2 colour test movies, I’ll be spending the next month sharing with you guys (via the @internetofWords Twitter feed) the joy of a world I was shown on screen during my formative years. Like my 12 year old daughter will undoubtedly remember the happy evening she spent watching kittens get bored and roam Godzilla-like across cheap cardboard sets, these memories are an essential part of the process of learning and understanding. Yes, kittens are relevant.

TV does not just have to be about the depressing things in life.