AWOL 2014 Issue 268 31st January | Page 15

Advertise here from only 40 baht per week to hull and back Mags Meanderings: From Som Tam To Mushy Peas lost in translation? I have lost count of the number of TV channels now available to me on Freeview in the UK, but it must be a few dozen. Many of them I can ignore - the shopping and ‘God’ channels for example, along with the gambling and ‘Babe Stations.’ Which leaves the 4 main BBC channels, plus the 4 main ITV (independent) channels and a handful of others specialising in history, drama, films or repeats. Still enough to choose from you would think, but the truth is that our major TV networks struggle to fill the vast amount of viewing time available to them with anything much worth watching. Cookery programmes, makeovers, and finding homes in the sun have been done to death, while minor celebrities have struggled to dance, skate, dive and get out of jungles. ITV in particular has become known for its’ ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries which are intended to show Britain at it’s worst under the guise of social comment. The most recent offering being the controversial ‘Benefits Street’, which looked at the lives of families living on one street in Birmingham where dependency on state benefits is said to be particularly high. You have to wonder if the programmes’ participants were paid - and if so whether they declared their income? But the BBC has come up with something equally cringe worthy, and no doubt vastly more expensive to produce. If you haven’t seen it yet in Hua Hin it’s worth a quick look online for the Thailand edition of ‘Sun, Sand and Suspicious Parents’. The series takes small groups of young people on their first holiday abroad without their parents, but also sneakily takes a couple of sets of the parents as well to spy on the antics of their offspring. Inevitably the ven Օ́