Fuck you BBC!

For several years now, British TV has degenerated to a mire of shit.

The only dramas that have been worth the attention span of anyone with half a brain have been few and far between, as have documentaries worth watching.

Admittedly there have been some good starts, but invariably these turn into something dismal - usually at the end of the first series.

Let's start with our biggest UK series - Doctor Who. I grew up with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, possibly the two finest Doctors and positive male role-models. I was horrified when they gave the role to the "wimpy effeminate twat" from All Creatures Great and Small.

A truly wonderful restart with Ecclestone! Then a downgrade to Tennant (well more of a crossgrade), and though superb, Piper sort of became the main star. Smith kept it going and then, in an amazing turn of stupidity they decided to go for another downgrade to Capaldi - reminiscent of whatever idiot decided to employ that "simpering effeminate buffoon" known to my generation as "the gay one" to differentiate between the two Bakers, before COMPLETELY destroying any credibility as a superhero with McCoy and topping it off with a long-standing-series-killing always-looks-surprised-in-fact-he-only-has-one-expression McGann.

Don't get me wrong - Ecclestone, and especially Tennant, managed to restore the image of the doctor as a force to be reckoned with by any(one/thing) trying to destroy good in the universe. It's just that the latest incarnation has turned into another "weak and human" doctor, a bit like Superman losing his abilities and trying to stop a five-man bank-job on his own with normal human strength. Maybe Capaldi will prove me wrong.

There are some mainstays, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness ... can't think of any more. Sky and others made it into the running and some promising starts were made - well, obviously there's Game of Thrones :)

There have been a few good new dramas such as Misfits, Utopia, Broadchurch and a few others, but Utopia seems to be cancelled and Misfits was never the same after the second series. Comedy has died on UK TV. 2 Pints being probably the last good comedy series for anyone under 35 (and some of us over 35 :)

And then came Chris Ryan's  Strike Back. Brilliant! Action, classic British wit, an international stage coupled with a dash of SAS flavouring made it an instant success with me. At last a series with appeal to counter the mainstay of British TV over the last 10 years - American TV! And then they fucked it up. I guess the American backers demanded an American star so the first programme of series two saw them killing off the main reason I watched it (Armitage's character Porter) and for two years it was pretty dismal - this year it has brought itself out of the doldrums and is starting to look good again. It would have been much better if they had told us he had finished his tour and been sent off to the Special Projects team.

And there's the truth. For the last ten years British TV has been in it's death throes - all the reality/pretending to be reality/daytime tits out/night-time big brother/desert island/pretend survival and complete shit drivel soap operas killed it off. I started to watch American (and a lot of Canadian filmed/based) TV. Fringe, X-Files, Voyager, the progression was natural. I was already hooked and it was natural to progress into 24, Justified, Dexter, Reno 911, well - the list could go on for a while.

More recently I have detected a downturn in North American TV as well - their habit of throwing twenty programmes up and seeing which ones stick has led to some monumental cancellation cock-ups.

TV is run by advertising. Without it, there is no TV. The BBC has got by for decades because there was no competition, but now they want me to pay for a TV licence when I don't even watch UK TV. I stopped paying and cancelled my licence, filling in the "I don't watch live TV" form.

The BBC have been making money selling their products through the BBC America company. For years.

We paid for our licences because we wanted quality documentaries and programmes, and they gave us shit. The good stuff they made they sold abroad and STILL took our money for the shit they gave us.

They couldn't afford to pay for F1, but they did pay for football and minority sports, and for Welsh and Scottish programmes that hardly anyone can understand. How the fuck can they still demand money as a permanent tax when they don't even give us what we fucking want? Fuck you BBC!