Canadian television.

Unless you're a sports fan, Canadian television is, on the whole, terrible. I was told this very early on by a middle-aged English man who'd emigrated to Canada thirty years back. We have limited cable (about twelve channels) and yet this is the extent of the tv scheduling:

-Hockey.
-Football.
-Curling, bowling, skiing and a multitude of other sports events that nobody is really that interested in watching.
-Jerry Springer-style shows.
-US lightweight, girly dramas (One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, 90210, Privileged).
-Trailer Park Boys (A Canadian told me it's "like The Office, but set in a trailer park!". It's meant to be satirical but isn't very funny and just reminds me of Jackass).

AND THAT'S IT. No decent dramas, no documentaries, no music shows, no interesting chat shows (e.g. Parkinson). I miss Channel 4 documentaries and shows like Panorama, Newsnight etc. It's not possible to LEARN anything from Canadian television. I have started watching the aforementioned girly shows, but mainly to try and claim some television rights over Seamus' sports monopoly. I was talking to some Canadians who were shocked that we only have four channels in the UK (I know, I know, most people have five but Suffolk still doesn't, and besides, does Channel 5 really count?). And I know British people similarly claim "there's never anything on tv" but THEY ARE WRONG. There is PLENTY on television, especially bearing in mind that nobody should need to watch tv for more than a couple of hours a week. At least at home, there's enough good television to fill my two-hours-per-week ideals. Here, I am scraping the barrel.

However, because I am not a Canada-hater (even though some of my posts suggest I am), I will say this for Canada - the adverts in between the crappy programmes are generally of a very high standard. Admittedly, each hour-long show may have six advert breaks, and there are some really irritating adverts for a mobile phone company. But other than this, there are a lot of adverts that are funny and clever (see below Molson advert), and often very well soundtracked. And the best thing is that, while British adverts never diss rival companies (I think there's a law surrounding that), Canadian adverts always directly draw comparisons with other brands. And sometimes flat-out tear them apart. This is particularly evident in all of the Apple adverts which complain about Windows. I love this!