Swipe of the Scissors

Having hit the couple of week break that is usual in TV shows over here (they're called, i believe, production gaps in that they allow the production to stay ahead of the transmitted episodes), the TV has been filled with more repeats than usual (reminds me of home in more ways than one!) and so it's become something of a challenge to find something interesting to watch. This hasn't been too much of a problem - i'm usually busy reading papers, tidying my apartment, or out at the lab/bars/restaurants/all of the above! On the occasions when i have found myself back home on an evening or at the weekend, with nothing much else to do, i've taken to watching a good number of films. The plethora of channels over here means that there are usually at least two or three films on at any one time and, if i'm not mistaken, this increases over the weekend. However, the scheduling of these films is somewhat unusual.

Take, for example, a couple of Saturdays ago - 2'o'clock in the afternoon and on the Warner Bros. channel there was a screening of "Interview With the Vampire". This Sunday just gone, the TBS channel had "Robocop" on at 3.30PM in the afternoon. A quick flick through the TV listings shows films like "Aliens" and "The Terminator" on various days in late afternoon or early evening - films hardly noted for their family friendly content. As you can imagine, these shows have undergone some serious trimming in order to merit a rating suitable for the time slot (I can't imagine what a PG Robocop is like!). In contrast to this, late evening films that i've watched have included "Star Trek: Insurrection", "Sliding Doors", "The Matrix" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Whilst these may not be wholly child friendly, they're at least a bit more amenable to the swipe of the scissors than the rest. It seems, however, that the onus as to who gets to watch what lies squarely on the shoulders of the parent/guardian/babysitter, which isn't very reliable, given that a lot of kids have probably got TVs in their rooms. And when events such as Colubmine happen, critics are happy to point to other 'influences'. Perhaps installing a 'watershed' time for such movies as we have in the UK would help - at least it would mean that people old enough to watch them can do so without fear that they're going to be hacked to pieces.