A safe house.

I recently purchased the complete series of the original Upstairs/Downstairs. It includes 75 hours of viewing time. That seems like a lot. But I figured I would watch episodes of the series when there was nothing else on television worth watching. This means, of course, that I have been watching the series every night. While it's wonderfully done and brilliantly written and acted, it unfortunately reminds me of just how mediocre television has become. I watched the Comcast crawl of what's available for viewing and, with few exceptions, it's all crap. Crime dramas, true crime shows, Fox propaganda, vulgar cartoon programs, movies "edited to fit your screen"and endless shows about cooking, decorating, brides and hoarding. To make matters worse all of these shows include dozens and dozens of commercials, pop-ups, and promotions for other lousy shows. So it's a pleasure to escape all this mediocrity and go back to The Bellamy house at Eaton Place where civilized three-dimensional characters face realistic problems and have conversations that—oh, my God—make you think. Except for the excellent news coverage of MSNBC and a few intelligent shows like Jeopardy, there is very little to watch. I'm beginning to wonder if shouldn't just cancel Comcast, give up tv programming and buy up every BBC series ever filmed.