bourbonneat | Entries tagged with qi

To be California lady with a love for British television is, all too often, like being a member of secret club that absolutely baffles you with its persistence in remaining a secret. I mean, it’s not as if this club’s members are trying to keep the secret. Quite the contrary – we’re dying to find someone, preferably a great many someones, who want to chat about our favorite shows.

If I want someone to commiserate with over the latest evilly delicious Grimm cliffhanger, yes, it’s a little on the geeky side for some, but I still have plenty of takers among my circle of friends and around my office. But when I wanted to giggle over the jokes in the Top Gear Africa special? No dice. I had to go online.

Having resources like BBCA and Netflix has made things easier over the years. I mean, back when I was in college (*snerk* and we walked to class uphill…both ways…in the snow…and oh, by the way, you kids get off my lawn ;) ) we only had access to gems like Red Dwarf if friends who studied abroad had the foresight to record shows to share back home. And, for my much older cousins, finding Monty Python’s Flying Circus on TV in those dark, dark days before anyone had a means of recording television (The horror!), required staying up until the wee hours of the morning and keeping the volume on both the television and mad cackling laughter to a minimum in order to avoid waking mom and dad.

So, yes, things are better. But even airing on BBCA on a regular basis is no guarantee that you will know anyone who watches the show. Witness my Top Gear example. I am a happy little geek who moves in happy little geeky circles, so it’s pretty much a given that most people I know have at least heard of Dr. Who and many of them watch it. Sherlock has also caught on with a number of folks I know. But move much beyond that and I at least find myself back in that oddly secret club territory and finding another “member” who lives locally makes for exciting times indeed.

So, when my guy invites an old friend over, and the conversation drifts to books and television. And then that old friend hesitates a moment in a way you just know means he’s going to mention something which, in his experience, is obscure. And he then says “Well there is this show I’ve been catching on YouTube…you’ve probably never heard of it but you might really like it. It’s called Quite Interesting,” his pronunciation of the t in quite, unconsciously crisper than it would have been were he using the same word in any other context. Well, then you will understand my coming to full attention, ears perked like a cat. “You watch QI?!”

And, in the grand scheme of things, if one must be a member of an annoyingly secret club, I guess that’s as nice a password as any.