Very Bad Things

There are some things I'm not comfortable writing about in this blog. They are usually too depressive to think about and, while I ponder how to express my thought, I feel like masochist. When I think about sharing those feelings and thoughts with readers of this blog, I feel like sadist.

But sometimes the desire to point certain phenomena for the sake of humanity is stronger. This is one of those occasions, and, gentle readers, please forgive my words that could seem too harsh.

One of those phenomena is a creative team responsible for Croatian TV shows Po ure torture and Trikvartača (Trikvartaca). Some four years ago they started Po ure torture on ATV, local Split station now known as TV Jadran. The show was to a certain degree inventive and funny. Two young women were doing gags and interviewing ordinary people on the street with all kinds of simple questions ("What is meteorologist?") and getting stupid answers. The show was success and the team got contract on HRT.

There they began inevitable slide in quality. Instead of interviews that began to turn towards physical stunts, each of them pushing the limits of good taste (offering 1000 HRK to anyone willing to eat 10 or more eggs in one take, offering 100 HRK to anyone willing to slap his friends silly etc.).

They topped themselves this summer, while doing the segments for the show called Trikvartača. I had stopped watching long ago and now I'm glad because of it. Thus I was spared the sight of few girls picked from the beaches and offered some 500 or so HRK to do something to a donkey I don't want to describe. This was followed by a stunt during which an ordinary man agreed to drive his car at the bottom of one Croatian ports, later leading to all kinds of outrage and official investigations.

By this time, HRT had enough and decided not to extend their contract, much to the delight of everyone hoping never to see such sights again.

The joy was short-lived. Nova TV, in a desperate search to get as many former HRT talents as possible, brought that team into their fold.

The only comforting thing about this is the fact that Nova TV, unlike HRT, is not state-run. That way Croatian taxpayers won't have to finance this electronic excrement.