Christina Ricci as Maggie, left, Margot Robbie as Laur, in the pilot episode of Pan Am.
Imagine they made a new TV season and nobody came.
We are now three months into the new TV campaign and that sound you hear is people turning off the new fall programs – or rolling their TV sets out to the curb.
According to a recent report released by the U.S. Nielsen ratings service, the number of American homes with TV sets is declining, even as the number of households keeps growing. Hmm.
By now it's a foregone conclusion that more people are PVRing programs and downloading their favourite shows, legally or otherwise, to sate their viewing needs, but the fact that not a single new drama or comedy has cracked the mainstream viewing psyche is slightly worrisome.
To date not a single new network program has made much of an impression on the North American public. The most-watched shows on television remain established comedies like Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, bankable reality franchises like Survivor and The Amazing Race and various predictable dramas with either NCIS or CSI in the titles.
Among the new fall offerings, cancellation notices have already been handed out to Charlie's Angels, Free Agents, How to Be a Gentleman and The Playboy Club, which lasted three episodes. Next on the chopping block is the sixties period drama Pan Am and the American TV remake of Prime Suspect, which was a bad idea to begin with.
Which leaves us with what? There's middling buzz for the fairy tale-inspired drama Once Upon a Time and the glossy prime-time soap Revenge, but the rest of the new fall lineup falls into the category of the instantly forgettable. Can you even remember the last time someone asked you, "Hey, have you seen that new show …?" Not this season.
As it turns out, The X Factor is a tiresome talent contest. Viewers have already forgotten about Unforgettable. Persons of Interest was interesting for three episodes, then began repeating plotlines. Up All Night is a dispirited rehash of I Love Lucy, after Lucy and Ricky had the baby. And Whitney is witless. No must-see TV here.
Perhaps most disappointing of all has been Fox's mega-budget series Terra Nova. Even with the imprimatur of Steven Spielberg as producer, the action-adventure series has more lulls than thrills and ratings are a fraction of what was projected. How many times can you watch someone being chased through the jungle by a dinosaur?
It's a sad state of affairs, I tell you. The only growth industry in today's TV universe lies in the heady realm of cable television, which ran out of ideas years ago but still tries to out-shock itself with each new concept.
Have you had the pleasure yet of watching the new TLC series Virgin Diaries? Based on a British TV concept, the show profiles young people who have chosen to hold off on "life's most intimate milestone" until marriage. Of course they're made to look like idiots and the clip of the awkward wedding kiss between the two virgins on the show's premiere episode went viral earlier this week.
Are you counting down the days to next month's debut of the U.S. Animal Planet series American Stuffers, which focuses on a family-owned taxidermy business in Arkansas that specializes in "freeze-dry" pet preservation.
And does anyone remember when A&E stood for Arts and Entertainment? Not any more. A&E is now TV's pre-eminent reality-TV factory and has made no secret of the fact it skews strongly to male viewers. (Who the heck do you think is watching Dog the Bounty Hunter?) Lately it's reaping huge U.S. ratings simply by going for the obvious.
Specifically, Lady Hoggers (A&E, 10 p.m.), which is currently considered the hottest property on U.S. cable. The show launched in early November, and by the time the ratings came in by the end of the month, by golly, A&E sent out a release announcing the highest ratings in the network's 25-year history.
Not to be confused with American Hoggers, which made its debut a month earlier on A&E, Lady Hoggers focuses sharply on Christie and Julie, who were born in Texas but now reside in sunny Florida, where they apparently make a tidy living corralling wild feral hogs that run rampant through the Sunshine State. By their own admission, the dogs do all the work.
Unlike most of what airs on network television these days, Lady Hoggers is one of those shows that must be seen, if only once, to be believed. The unscripted premise purports to depict the workday routine of the two lady hog wranglers, but who's fooling who?
Lady Hoggers is an excuse to watch two young women, invariably wearing tight T-shirts or halter tops, running around madly. In most episodes, the show resembles scenes lifted from a Russ Meyers movie. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the male viewing demographic.
Check local listings.
John Doyle returns on Thursday.