Stranger than friction

The National Telecommunications Commission of Venezuela has made Televen TV pull The Simpsons off the air - at least during the 11 a.m. slot reserved for children who, according to law, ought to be able to watch television at this time without the need for supervision from adults. It said the programme might contain "messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents".

Viewers had called to complain about the subversive and inappropriate messages in the series - which, according to Televen TV general manager German Perez Nahim "had the highest levels of viewership for that morning timetable in the history of the channel".

Ironically, however, the series has been replaced with Baywatch Hawaii, unequivocally famous for its bombshell-babes running in endless slo-mo across undulating sands.

Meanwhile, the Beeb has had to make an abject apology for broadcasting celebrities using foul language way before the watershed hour of nine p.m. Just for the record, although in Malta this would have been treated flippantly (with an "u ejja!" as someone was heard saying), worldwide, an on-air apology is considered one of the most serious non-financial penalties that a media communications watchdog might impose.

Things are never what they seem in television land - because not only does the camera lie; it tries to convince you that it is telling the truth.

Paprati, which is obviously derived from Paperissima but is not quite the same thing, is the name of a new candid camera show on Net Television, as from Wednesday.

People tell me that I (sometimes) have a sense of humour, but there are some things I just do not consider funny. One of the skits that I do involves the cast and crew of Santa Monika, where the 'other' actors were disrupting filming.

A couple of others I did not consider funny involved people having their car-wheels spattered with ersatz blood, their vehicles surrounded by 'crime scene, do not cross' tape, and a horde of policemen descending upon them ostensibly to take them down to the station for questioning.

Even the most immaculately blameless person tends to start upon seeing a policeman bearing down upon him. And being placed in such a compromising situation, willy-nilly, tends to bring out the sweats in anyone. Consider, then, what it would do to a person with a dicky heart.

I am a viewer and I do not always enjoy these things.... when it goes beyond the thin line of fun.... I am all for a couple stopping to kiss in the middle of a narrow street, holding up the traffic, or for the old and tired clip of the ice-cream vendor dropping or tasting ice-creams before handing them over. But playing on people's fears and insecurities, to me, is beyond the pale.

Reality gets another squeeze when John Busuttil and Moira Delia trade places, in a manner of speaking, for the new show L-Ikbar Bluff, to which I had referred a couple of columns ago. In this series, people rely, again, on their innate powers of deception to try and fool others into thinking they are what they are not.

And of course, probably no other British family (apart from the Royals) gets as much attention as the Mitchells of East Enders, who made the news, in a manner of speaking, twice, lately.

The first time was when the BBC decided to cut costs by scrapping episodes of the soap that were to be shot in Spain - and the cast ended up in Weymouth, Dorset, instead. Ironically, it had been hoped that the filming could be done in Norfolk - but it would have been even more expensive to work there than in Spain.

The next thing we knew, the cast were themselves threatening to halt filming. Yobs created a ruckus during scenes being shot on a beach, in which the Mitchell sisters Roxy and Ronnie track down their long-lost uncle. Unfortunately, this was not a candid camera scenario; the insults were for real.

And while on the topics of behind-the-scenes and finances, it would be interesting to find out exactly what the current financial situation is at PBS. Will the books balance - or will the company be well in the black, at the end of the financial year? Can the company afford to give production bonuses to the value of Lm500 to people? Would it be too much to extend this across the board?

From where I stand, Gizelle appears to be given much more publicity than Mirjana Coljerò, sometimes to the point of overkill. This week it even became embroiled in a pseudo-political ball-game with every word that was said about last Tuesday's alleged technical fault being nitpicked by the folks at Media.Link Communications.

I've heard of buildings on stilts, but this is ridiculous: in an effort to highlight the progress being made at MCAST, and to tell us that even more of it is being made than in visible to the naked eye, Radio 101 went overboard. We were informed blithely that il-bini tal-campus il-ġdid ta' l-MCAST mexa' 'l quddiem...

Media Education booklets might well include a chapter on body and vocal language, during live transmissions, in their next editions. The notes would refer especially to language used while ad-libbing - consigning phrases such as qed ngħidlek and inkredibbli and jiġifieri, as well as actions such as nose touching and hair-fixing, promptly into the liars' cauldron.

television@timesofmalta.com