Telling the good programmes from the bad

What's the first thing you know about a new programme? usually it's either the entry in a TV listing, or it's a trailer you see when you're watching something else.
Trailers are great. they're such good time-savers. It's quite reasonable to expect that a programme maker will put, if not the absolute best bits, at least something in the top 25% of a programme's best scenes into the promotional trailer for it. What would be the point of trying to use something that's dull, or irrelevant in an advertisement - you want people to choose to watch it, not to make an instant judgment that it's terrible. So it's reasonable to suppose that so long as the trailer-maker is competent, the trailer will be a fair representation of the programme itself and that it will showcase the main characters and give a good impression of what to expect. If you don't like the trailer, it's likely that you won't much care for the programme, either. There are other techniques, like showing deliberately enigmatic trailers, in the hope that they will pique the interest of the viewer and their curiosity will make them watch. Again, if that works you're probably in the target group the programmer is aiming for - so it's more often than not reliable, too.

If you don't see a trailer. if you see a programme listed somewhere, what are your options? Apart from my inbuilt avoidance of certain genres (soaps, sport, quiz shows, reality, anything based on a celebrity: "X's .... something or other", animals, police/fire/ambulance dramas and talent contests) I have come to the conclusion, over the years, that there are some telltales you can use. While they're not guaranteed and there are exceptions to all of them, they are a first approximation to whether I'll like a programme or not.

• Single word titles - Friends, Heartbeat, Misfits, Crimewatch. These are trying to make a statement with a short, punchy name. Generally they don't do it for me. (The exception is Cheers,Minder and possibly Countdown though I'm rarely in a position to watch that) It's almost as if the creators are making it an order to WATCH! the programme. In that case, no thanks.
• Eponymous titles - Judge Judy, The Jeremy Kyle Show, Apart from the well-known awfulness of these two examples (and the guilt by association of anything that tries to sound like them), trading on the name of the presenter strikes me as a lazy option. It tells me nothing about what HAPPENS on the show, merely who the main character is, and the presumption that it will be mainly about them: only them. There are some programmes that manage to break both these first two guidelines: Frasier is one that comes to mind, House is another (though, never having watched it having seen a trailer, I wasn't aware that was the guy's name. I avoided it on the basis that it was a medical drama)

And, of course, the title is frequently the biggest clue to what the programme is about: Although I've never watched Nip/Tuck the title hints at something medical, so that's a red flag. There are a lot of cases where the title is misleading, however. For a long time I assumed Everybody Hates Chris was about Chris Evans - a natural and easy mistake to make, I'm sure you'll agree.

If the signs aren't conclusive and I do find myself watching something new, with no real clue what it's trying to give me I feel quite justified in invoking "The 10 minute Rule". Most programmes are made with commercials in mind. Either because the channel that screens them will have breaks for adverts, or because the makers realise that (outside the UK) the overwhelming majority of channels show commercials - and the programmes must fit that format. The first commercial break seems to always appear somewhere around 10 minutes into a programme. So it's reasonable to assume that during the time the adverts are on, viewers will be flicking around for something more intersting to watch. It's therefore imperative that in the first 10 minutes of a show, the programme gives all the wayward viewers a reason to return to it - and not to stay with the rerun of Two and a Half Men or Friends or whatever else is shown all the time on some channel, everywhere. So, 10 minutes it is. If a programme can't keep my attention past the first break, it's not doing its job. Either that, or the writers have somehow got the notion that their audience is so committed, that they'll return after the break, anyhow - no matter how turgid or slow or obscure the programme was. For them I say: just sit back and watch your ratings plummet. I don't write TV shows, yet even I know you've got to hook the viewers early. For writers who don't know that basic nugget, what chance is there they'll be able to produce an engaging programme?

The same principle applies to the first episode, too. Nowadays most new series only get a first run of 10 or fewer episodes (or three or four for British-made dramas). So with a short series, there isn't time to let things develop, slowly over the first five or six episodes. By then, you have to be on the home stretch - or at least round the first bend (or should that be over the first hurdle? I get my sporting metaphors mixed up.) Now, I do like a slow-burner, but there's slow and there's extinguished. If the plot is going to take several episodes to get going, there had better be some good characters to invest in, to keep me interested and make me want to come back next week.

This might all sound terribly shallow and instant-gratification-y, but TV has to compete with all sorts of other distractions. It's not as if I habitually plonk myself down on the sofa and just watch the least-worst programmes until it's time for bed. Decent quality content is now so scarce - or I've grown too picky - that my TV regime has got to the point where I explicitly turn the box on to watch a given programme at a specified time, then turn it off until the next one is due - which these days is hardly ever on the same day. Ultimately, even if these guidelines aren't reliable, little harm is done. These days there's no such thing as missing a programme: everything gets repeated many, many times and if I've dismissed something that does turn out to be a pearl, I can always catch a rerun, or pick it up online. As for having to choose between two programmes on at the same time? Even without a recorder, it happens so rarely that I almost never have to even make the decision of which one to watch "in real time" and which to put off until it's repeated, or on a "+1" channel.