I've been thinking about the concept of slow TV. You know how we live in this super fast-paced world of phones and information and 'needing the new', well there seems to be a nice little sub-section of television that exists solely to soothe and calm.

The first program that made me think about this was one on at Christmas a few years back where they filmed a reindeer pulling a sled across the snow filmed from above with (slow) facts coming up on screen whilst the sled moved along in its slow way. Very nice it was.

Heading over to Wikipedia gives us a history of slow TV and informs that an early version of it was Andy Warhol's 'Sleep' film from 1964 which showed a poet named John Giorno sleeping for 5 hours. So far so good. Norway have also been picking this concept up over the last ten years (apparently) where one program showed a 7 hour train ride on the Bergen Line. This apparently got decent viewing figures. I imagine any Norwegian reading this to be laughing and thinking 'idiot' but it seems plausible to me.

I am sure every country has its own version of slow TV but ours in the UK is exemplified by Out Of Town, a show presented by Jack Hargreaves dating back to the 60s where he just narrates and films people doing stuff. From making cider the traditional way to tales of poachers. The theme music is super balearic. Here's a few examples...

Recent years has seen the arrival in the UK of 'The Great Pottery Throwdown' or 'Handmade - Britains Best Woodworker' - both from Channel 4 - which may well fit the bracket more of nice TV than slow but all the same, both are a mellow watch. There was also the amazing 'John Was Trying To Talk To Aliens' Netflix documentary which is worth 17 minutes of anyones time. Where he was getting such amazing music from is beyond me...

I also watched this amazing film that someone posted in the TP forum (I think) of a chap building a swimming pool in his back yard out of clay. It's a very nice watch... Though I am glad he is doing the digging not me.

Back to the mellow. I have an interest in modular synthesizers and there is this whole part of the scene which involves soldering circuit boards and capacitors and stuff together to make your own modules. I've never used a soldering iron in my life but I must admit I find videos of people doing it fascinatingly boring and a very mellow watch... Here's this guy called Molten Music building a Deckard's Dream which is a modular version of the famous CS80 as used by Vangelis. Excuse the very unmellow YouTube ads...

You could of course just put on the soothing tones of Bob Ross on 'The Joy of Painting' if this is your thing but slow TV definitely feels like it's suiting my mindset. Recently, after their Christmas special, I revisited the whole of The Detectorists, a program that sums up a certain essence of countryside folk very well and is not only very funny but warm and charming and highly recommended. In turn that led to a brief period watching 'Digging For Britain', an archeological origami which may well have informed the Detectorists. I may go back to this, Anyway all this had me muling over the concept of slow TV which at the end of the day I've decided is there perfect tonic for now and good mind food for us all in this day and age.