TV therapy - how to get a life!

TV can be great as a sort of therapy.  When I first moved into this flat, some of the rituals that kept me going included watching 'Roger and Val Have Just Got In' (the second series started on the day after I moved in - I hadn't seen it before, fell madly in love with it, and now it's just synonymous with my new life).  I also watched every episode of 'Mad Men' back to back; therapy because that show is just so awesomely, amazingly good that it draws you in; you're so engrossed in the characters' lives that you forget your own.  We all need therapy like that every now and again.

But TV can also be great as trash.  I've said it before and I'll say it again; everybody should have frivolous bits of trash in their lives to break up the mundane and all the seriousness.  The TV trash I most enjoy is trash that I'm not sure knows whether it's trash or not, with events occurring that you're not sure are supposed to be ironic.  A recent example is 'Millionaire Matchmaker', a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a dating agency for millionaires (really?)  This show became a guilty pleasure for a while; every episode featuring millionaires who were adamant that they wanted the agency to find them someone who "doesn't just want me for my money".  Admirable, except for the glaring fact that the agency was set up for the very purpose of finding matches for millionaires.  So...not many relationships actually worked out, funnily enough.

Yesterday I encountered another show along slightly similar lines.  Called 'Cherry Healey: How to Get A Life', it featured a journalist (guess her name?) investigating the single life against coupledom in an attempt to describe and shed a light on so-called controversial relationship and lifestyle choices.  

The show featured Cherry Healey interviewing two single people who do a lot of sleeping around. Both were single and upfront about not wanting a relationship, neither were breaking up marriages and both were under thirty.  Then she interviewed a man of 22 who wanted to settle down.  Then she interviewed twins; one married, one single and got them to 'swap lives' for a day so they could see what it was like to be married/single (except you don't, do you?  If you're married with a kid then a night out with the girls isn't really being 'single' and if you're single and childless then looking after a kid for a day doesn't show you what it's really like to be 'settled').  Then she went to a town in Wales ("think 'Gavin and Stacey' but without the seaside!" Cherry trilled, as if her viewers were so thick they wouldn't have known anything about Wales otherwise) to interview a couple who used sex toys...that you can get over the counter from Ann Summers.  

All throughout the programme we were being told about all these "controversial life and relationship choices" and I kept on wondering what on Earth I was missing.  But that was the beauty of it.  It was baffling and completely pointless, and it didn't tell you anything you didn't already know.  And yet I quite enjoyed it.  Go figure.