A Life Beyond TV

Eleven year old me wrote a story for my end of year English Language exam. I scored top marks out of around 120 people who were in my year. I don’t remember what the topic was, but essentially all you had to do was make up a story based on a picture you’d been given. I seem to recall it was a photo of a creepy looking forest. I’m sure it was right up my alley.

Across the following years my marks for English Language gradually declined. End of year exams stopped asking us to write stories and instead made us write essays. There were dry topics like the rise of football hooliganism or politics or other subjects I had no skills or interest in tackling.

I think the zenith was when I was reduced to writing a piece about society. I wrote in the manner of a famous Ray Bradbury short story (although I’d not read any Bradbury at that point, aside from perhaps Fahrenheit 451). I was the narrator, an outsider walking the streets of my home town late at night and commenting on all the people sitting in their living rooms staring at their TV sets addicted to whatever happened to be the hit show of the time.

I’m sure what I wrote was terrible and deserved whatever pitiful mark it was given, but damn it, why couldn’t they just let me write some fiction?

I didn’t hate TV. I didn’t see it as a terrible drug that was slowly melting the minds of society and turning us all in to sofa bound cabbages. I watched  a lot of what my family watched. I watched the standard kids TV shows of the time – Grange Hill or whatever. TV was expanding then. By the time I turned 16 we had four channels – four! The new channel brought us alternative comedy, exciting new British films, new outlets for music. It bought us Countdown and Brookside.

Sure, I loved TV. When I left home to head to university (polytechnic in my case, and if you don’t know what that is, ask your grandparents), all we had was one TV in a communal room at the centre of the halls of residence where I lived. People would argue over what to watch or sit through whatever trash was on until they could catch the latest episode of Neighbours.

After enduring a term of this, I managed to acquire a small portable B&W TV from my sister and I was free to watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. A few months later it broke down and all it displayed was a wobbly picture that only filled two thirds of the screen. That was how I consumed most of the 1986 World Cup being beamed late at night for us all the way from Argentina.

Many years later, when I left home for good, I owned another similar B&W portable TV. I forget where this one came from. I was living in a bedsit at the top of a grand old Bristolian town house spread across four different floors. Now it was Euro 96 that I was consuming. I think the biggest match of that tournament was when we beat the Netherlands 4-1. I was working that night, but had set the video to record the match. (Yes, I had my own video recorder by that point too). Unfortunately someone told me the result before I left the office and the game was spoilt. I probably never actually watched the match at all.

Soon after, this TV also gave up the ghost. Not in a random, you can still kind of watch if you squint hard enough and don’t mind suffering incipient sea sickness, just a black screen of nothingness. At that point I could’ve bought myself a replacement. But someone told me they had a spare set they never used and offered to drive round with it. (I didn’t then, and never have since, owned a car of my own). But they never got around to delivering the TV. And I never hassled them about it, because it was something they’d offered as a favour and I didn’t want to seem pushy. And then the weeks without a TV turned in to months and then the months turned in to years. And the truth was, I didn’t miss it.

In Bristol I had a busy social life. I worked long hours in a call centre, working as a charity fundraiser. On Thursday nights the Bristol SF group met in one of an ever changing array of local pubs. Friday nights were spent with people from work, trawling bars by the waterfront and then ending up at Renato’s – a terrible Italian pizza place that had a late night alcohol license so it attracted all the crowds of people that had been kicked out from the nearby pubs at closing time. Alternate Mondays was the BFW – Bristol Fiction Writers group. Other nights there might be films to go and see or bands playing at one of the many venues scattered across the city.

When I moved to Cornwall I was still TV-less. My nephew thought I was weird for not owning a TV. I still didn’t miss it. I listened to a lot of radio. I read a lot of books. I listened to a lot of music. I was doing fine. But the internet was here now. At first it would take you 30 minutes just to download a single still image over dial up internet. Gradually it became possible to listen to radio shows via the internet. Shows you couldn’t access on a standard radio.

Dial up give way to broadband. You could now watch videos on YouTube. Then came the BBC iPlayer. Just as outside forces had taken TV away from me, now a different set of outside forces had returned it back. I could’ve resisted – maybe for a while I did – but the truth remained that I’d never fallen out of love with TV. I hadn’t chosen to give it up. I was happy either way.

So now in 2026 I can watch all the TV I want. Which it turns out isn’t that much. I don’t have subscriptions to Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV. I have what comes for free. I still don’t have a TV set. I do pay for a TV license. (For many years I didn’t have to, but I largely value what the BBC do and so I don’t begrudge paying them now). I watch stuff at breakfast – anything is better than consuming the news these days. I watch stuff with my evening meal. But that’s about it. I watch a couple of quiz shows, a few random comedies and some pure entertainment like Taskmaster. Beyond that, I’d rather read or write or make music or listen to music.

I also watch a lot of content on Twitch – often third monitoring, as it’s known by the cool kids. Background viewing. But that’s a different story for another day. I’m no weirder than I was before or after I stopped watching TV. I don’t have any views on the good or evil of the TV industry. Soon enough that industry, as it’s operated throughout my lifetime, will probably be gone anyway. So there’s no need to write about it. Certainly no need to write half-baked philosophical pieces like the one that got me poor grades as a teenager. A teenager who simply wanted to be left alone to write fiction, to use their imagination, and to make stuff up.