800 Words

My wife and I have been watching the Australian show, 800 Words. We’ve watched many shows over the years and when one ends we don’t find it too difficult to waste more time on another. We’ve made our way through all the seasons of Grimm which we thought got better and better until it ended when it was at its best. We watched Once Upon A Time until we quit when it got worse and worse and we stopped in disgust. We saw all of 24 and Longmire, both of which became unbearably politically correct in the end, and are avid watchers of The Blacklist.  We’ve even seen every episode of Psych and Castle. I mention these to establish my credentials. I feel like judging requires a library of experience and knowledge only gained through dogged pursuit, parked in front of the big screen, remote at the ready.

My tolerance level is somewhat lower than my wife’s. I can watch a show for a while and finally be put off by the theme or the silliness or the writing, but she will watch a show ‘til the bitter end. I attribute this to my early start in television viewing. She maintains that, as a child, she rarely watched television. She lived in a small town in eastern Arizona where it wasn’t quite as warm as was Phoenix. She claims that she was outside most daylight hours. I spent plenty of time outdoors, but they called it the Valley of the Sun for a reason, and that was because it sounded better than the Valley of the Heat. There was no shame in coming into an air conditioned house when the thermometer threatened to explode, and to keep my mother from having her internal pressure pass the breaking point, we often watched television.

Television was new in the late 1950s and 1960s. The networks were still trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Until the early 1960s, all shows were black and white, and most televisions were black and white until much later than that. Ours was, anyway. We would gather around the 12 inch screen in the 4 foot cabinet and watch Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best and The Andy Griffith Show and The Rifleman and I Love Lucy and Hazel and Dick Van Dyke. As Hollywood started to take off the training wheels and color became a thing, Bonanza and Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island and The Time Tunnel and Star Trek, and even Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color came and went. Eventually Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and the Smother’s Brothers and Carol Burnett lit up our living room.

I didn’t even realize that having a television was a status symbol. I assumed that everyone had one; in fact, most of the world was not so fortunate. Nothing was being broadcast in most of the world, either. I had the occasion to visit my cousin in Omaha in 1968 and was stunned to find that they had five televisions…for four people in the house. Little did I know that was the shape of things to come. Now, the rest of the world has television, both broadcast and appliance, and they watch what we’ve been watching for decades; syndicated, and translated where necessary.

Which brings this back around to 800 Words. First of all, it is Australian. That means that translation is sometimes needed. As my wife and I watch we often have to pause and replay to figure out exactly what was said. It is not the least irritating; the Aussie accent is so appealing to our ears that are so used to the flat pronunciation of our home in America that we would gladly play it again and again. That isn’t the only thing appealing about the show, however. The premise is that a 40 year old Australian man writes a column for a newspaper in Sydney. Peculiarly, every installment of the column is exactly 800 words. You might imagine that there is appeal in that for me; I write. The defined length implies saying something in a succinct manner that is worth reading. When writing, I estimate that 800 words is of a shortish length and takes about 60 to 90 minutes to write, which also appeals.

The story proceeds that the man’s wife dies and he moves to the small town of Weld, New Zealand with his two protesting children and against the wishes of his in-laws. Starting over is hard, but the town characters are interesting, the story is intriguing, the scenery is beautiful, the acting and writing are good, and the show is a runaway success in its home country. If it is time for you to pick a new show, you will enjoy 800 words.

This is 800 words, in case you were counting. (not including this line).