In addition to having felt less than healthy lately, Sydney is now experiencing day six in a streak of incessant rain, an apparent weather phenomenon.  Lucky timing, huh?  So, other than the observation that in a hilly city, six days of rain turns gutters into miniature water parks, my cultural observations have been somewhat limited to what I can observe from my couch.  Fortunately for me that means I have spent a great deal of time with my second love, television.

To begin with, a lack of cable means you only have five channels.  I think with some sort of external box we could get an additional five for free, but a desire to remain cloistered in a dry apartment has prevented me from doing so.  By American standards, we might see that as having nothing to watch, but there is actually an astounding variety of things on from day to day.

During the day, standard American soap operas and talk shows dominate, but I have yet to figure out why Ellen and Oprah are about half a season behind, and The View seems to be right on schedule.  I might know where the soap operas were in sequence if A. I watched soap operas and if B. their plots ever actually moved forward.

International news comes on at lunch, and breaks up gaps between shows.  It may come as no surprise to news watchers that the programs here are far better, and far more informative than they are in the States, but to someone who used to avoid the news like it was the swine flu, this is an unexpected change.  The police blotter and crime news takes up an insignificant blip of time, as opposed to becoming a drawn out drama.  Human interest pieces are limited to things that are actually interesting.  And the news is stated simply, informatively, and without co-hosts to pass inane banter passed back and forth across the news desk.  I, however, do miss weather maps that are actually readable.  Australia is a big country.  I really don’t care what wind conditions are like in Darwin.  Zoom in!

To catch up with the weirder events in the news, you might choose to watch a show like Good News Week, where a group of comedians get together to play games associated with the oddest international events of the week.  I think what I enjoyed most about this show was its completely unstructured structure.  The comedians essentially rule the stage.  It was just like having a group of friends over for game night.  Eventually, everyone gets drunk enough that it doesn’t matter how the game is being played or who is winning, and the conversation degrades until you’re discussing fingering.  Yes, that’s exactly what they were discussing toward the end of the show.  And despite the fact that a popular sketch comedy show called Chaser was, just the previous week, suspended for making jokes about dying children, I have yet to hear about any sensor backlash from that.

And speaking of odd censoring decisions, why are shows like Man Men on at 8:30, while The Supernatural is on at 10 (in addition to being rated M for mature)?  And yes, Mad Men is on regular TV here as well as Flight of the Concords.  They are every bit as good as everyone said they were, and cable seems less essential now.  Primetime in Oz (which I think starts at 7:30 or 8:30, odd that) is also fleshed out with American shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Bones, Castle, Law and Order (of course) and the Aussie reality competitions like Master Chef Australia and the soon to be starting Dancing with the Stars Australia.  Pretty standard fare, even if the imports are still about a half season behind.  Please don’t tell me who wins So You Think You Can Dance, just give it a couple of weeks and then we can talk about it.

But perhaps the most fascinating shows, are the documentaries and quite real reality shows, which run frequently and are sometimes unnervingly uncensored.  I’ve already discussed the surprising doc, The Perfect Vagina, but to add to the graphic surgery in that hour of TV I have since seen spinal surgery, watched brain tumors being removed, see an entire team of rugby players give themselves a check for testicular cancer (in the locker room, all at the same time, without any clothes on, and without any “blur” put in during post) and seen real footage of people going to doctors about embarrassing illnesses on a show called, you guessed it, Embarrassing Illnesses.  The next time you have to go to your doctor for an emotionally uncomfortable procedure, just think to yourself, at least I’m not on TV.

In addition to TV watching I, of course, also had to test the DVD player.  Since I believe in total cultural immersion, it only made sense to rent Mad Max and The Road Warrior.  It was nice to see that having been here a while I could appreciate something about the movies I never would have noticed before.  In almost every outdoor scene there is one constant background noise, bird calls.  It just goes to show, the birds have and will always, even in a bleak apocalyptic future, rule Australia.