Not so long ago, completely by accident, I realised that we have a new channel on our box of wonders. Since I don’t live in Helsinki I never knew that those folk living in larger urban conurbations have been ‘enjoying’ the questionable delights of Nelonen spin-off Liv for a year now, while us country-bumpkin type folk have only been able to watch their broadcasts on the internet. Of course there are about two hundred billion more interesting things on the internet than any of Liv’s crappy shows which explains why this cultural monstrosity has hitherto passed me by like a sailboat in the night, or indeed like the faint whiff of raw sewage on the passing breeze.

Y’see, it appears that Liv is to women what Jim is to men, i.e. a totally pointless and patronising attempt to pigeonhole each and every member of a gender as someone with the intellectual capacity of a doorknob and the viewing desires of your average goat. For blokes this means that Jim is full of shows about cars, explosions, crazy folk and violent police officers. For women, Liv’s schedule is filled with programmes about the family, babies, interior design, fashion, reruns of drama series favoured by females (Desperate Housewives) and shows involving THE single most annoying woman to appear on television EVER : Ellen DeGeneres. I don’t know why she’s so irksome, but she is, and to top it all off she’s now also appeared on another channel as a totally pointless judge on America’s Got Talent, or whatever the latest Simon Cowell bag of poop is called.

Anyhoo, check out Liv’s website and you can see that every single one of their programmes is an import. Oh, my bad, I did find one Finnish-made show there called Vanessa ja pikkuväki, which admittedly contains all the bad editing and amateur camerawork that Finnish telly is renowned for. So my question is why on earth do Nelonen and Liv consider themselves to be a vehicle for British and American ‘cultural’ imports? On the one hand it’s great for English-speakers since you can understand pretty much everything that’s on. On the other hand it’s like the MD of Liv went round with a massive bin and just dumped a load of old crap into it for re-broadcast on our screens. I mean, Scott Baio is 46 & Pregnant? Like, wtf is this drivel, yeah?

The other day there was some God-awful American show involving two adolescents who were, y’know, really in love and stuff but they kept arguing so they went on this show to speak to a relationship counsellor who convinced them to stop slagging each other off all the time and now they’re, like, so happy and love each other so much and that. My advice would have been for them to grow some pubic hair and then reconsider their relationship. Still, I was first of all amazed that I managed to watch it without projectile vomiting my dinner all over the flat screen, but I was even more amazed when after the credits it said ©2003. Two-thousand-and-three? They could be dead by now. Which for a channel called Liv is rather ironic, don’t you think?

NICK BARLOW