Whats Your Guilty Pleasure ?
When it feels like your eyes are square, your head’s a mush and your bladder’s touching the table, its time to get out of the studio (cave).
It’s a demanding place to be, a hermit existence at times and not good to linger when the work is done. Ok it’s not working down a coal mine, but Voiceover work is mentally taxing. It’s probably the hundreds of micro-decisions and constant hat changing.
The solution isn’t rocket science, (take regular breaks), which doesn’t mean checking your emails and death scrolling Youtube, which is not taking a break.
Exercise is good
But what about the short breaks ? You need the odd mindless 15 minutes to reset and re-charge – but away from the work-space. Thats where 70s TV shows are perfect.
There’s something about 70s and 80s TV dramas that suck me in just enough to dis-engage and tune out. Maybe it’s the high production quality ?
Some Honourable Mentions
- Tales of the Unexpected
- The Sweeney
- Hammer House of Horror – oh yes, the mental digestive biscuit.
Why are they so good for this ? Is it just a happy nostalgic indulgence?
I find they’re so distant in every sense from the here and now that they’re the perfect distraction. They come from an age of explosive creativity though, constrained only by tech and with creators schooled in the 60s.
The cartoons of the 70s were wild, untamed and properly creative, probably dreamt up in Putney bedsits on rainy Sundays when everything closed at 2pm.
hey call it ‘The Long 60s’, that long hangover that ended with the arrival of ‘He-Man’ in 1981.
There’s something wonderfully naive about shows featuring local police officers solving murder cases, before heading home for tea.
The cars driving down half empty roads in London, the stations with single pane glass windows and the innocently blind social stereo-typing:
‘Oh this scene involves a surgeon at home, better play some classical music’
I’ll skirt around the casual acceptance of misogyny and other evils at this point, but this just adds even further distance (thankfully).
Is it a guilty pleasure, probably and I’ll admit that I’m usually alone when watching. Getting right out of the studio and away from the tech is essential for a break; and after 30 minutes of Kojak you might as well have been on the moon.
So what’s your guilty pleasure ?
Lending My Shoulder To The Wheel
Reach out and I’ll help take some of the load from your shoulders with quality narration, always happy to help.
