TV: Bringing Sexy Back

Have you tried to buy good, well-designed hi-fi equipment lately? If you’re not in a B&O salesroom you’re in a discount shop trying to rationalise a less-than-best price for the least awful-looking. Actually, you’re probably in the Apple temple rationalising the £150 price tag for good sounding iPod earbuds. What’s sexy about hi-fi?

But TV…it’s on a roll. Flat screen TVs look like the future: big, sleek, thin, modern. Go into the TV section of a department store and it’s like standing in a multiplex cinema with the walls down – who doesn’t want some of that? And with prices tumbling and easy credit, that 40-inch Sony becomes a ‘when’ item, not an ‘if’.

And you want it because the programming demands it. No, not ‘Casualty’ and ‘Coronation Street’ – storytelling that’s as old as your grandparents black and white set – but sports and the new-style shows like ‘Lost’, ‘Sopranos’, and ‘Heroes’.

It’s interesting that while our attention span is supposed to be diminishing to mere minutes, the coolest, most interesting shows on TV are the densest, longest, most complex. Shows that take several hour-long episodes just to introduce the characters, never mind their back-story. Shows that move backwards and forwards in time at will and if you can’t keep up – tough. A recent edition of ‘Lost’ moved through three different time zones – are you paying attention? The central character of ‘Heroes’ also moves through time and space. He’s Japanese, named Hiro (ba-boom), and half his dialogue is in Japanese. Are you paying attention? Like sports, this is storytelling with an end you can’t predict.

I want a modern TV to watch these modern shows. But that’s just the beginning….