Singapore TV
We don’t have cable so we get the six channels that are freely available on Singapore TV.
There are two Mandarin language channels – their soap operas have subtitles, so I can follow along if I really want to know what that woman is doing with the sword, or why on earth that guy has an attendant holding a parasol over him. The soaps are not the long-running type that we get in the U.S., where the woman putting strychnine in the soup to poison her husband is shown stirring the pot for six months; the writers move things right along, and include shopping expeditions, court trials, mob hits, good and bad parenting, fictional Chinese/Korean/Japanese history, you name it.
There’s a Tamil language channel that runs from about 2-10 p.m. on weekdays. It has rather poorly produced shows – variety shows in which children show off their Karnataka dance or spelling skills, soap operas in which the cast stands around in a semicircle before the camera, acting their hearts out in front of ugly sets. The women are seventeen types of lovely, and the men all have Major Hair. Everyone gesticulates wildly; maybe Tamil is the Asian equivalent of Italian?
The Bahasa Malaya channel runs soaps about life in rural Malaysia, or about family problems that occur when a girl’s cake shop bumps into economic hard times. Mostly it runs cooking shows – often in tandem with nutritional advice to try to keep everyone from getting really plump on Malaysian cooking. Fat chance! Lots of women with and without headscarves, pretty rounded faces with big eyes and full lips. This is the channel to watch if you’re looking for older women – they rule the kitchen, so the programs revolve around them. Production values are OK, but I once saw a cooking show where the producers thought it was OK to focus the camera on a whirling blender for about 40 seconds straight. That may not sound like a long time, but it really doesn’t make for riveting TV.
There’s an English language entertainment channel; it runs lots of ads for movies, features on Hollywood gossip, Ellen and Oprah, and the odd English home makeover show. Periodically you glimpse Mr. Bean or famous British actors in obscure parts.
Channel zero (well, it’s below one on the remote) is the Muslim religious channel. At least that’s what it looks like. For all I know it’s the latest in hot entertainment from Indonesia. But it’s largely pictures of mosques or serene landscapes, with subtitles praising God. Presumably the translation of “Allah,” but I am not in a position to say.
And finally, most spectacularly, there’s the Singapore English language Channelnews Asia. This has the Reuters ticker across the bottom, even during advertisements, so you can keep up with the American elections or international cricket or tennis results – and on the stock markets all over the world. The greatest emphasis is on Asian news, of course, and Singaporean news in particular. I bet I know a heckuva lot more than you do about Secretary of State Clinton’s recent visit to Asia, thanks to this channel. There are also programs produced by MediaCorp, the national TV production organization. These range all over the map, but all have a Singapore focus. There are soaps about life in Singapore schools or life in Singapore during the Japanese occupation; food programs in which the hosts dash to hawker stalls all over Singapore searching out famous traditional preparations, sampling them, and interviewing the stall owners. They invariably ask, “What’s the secret of this wonderful dish?” and just as invariably receive the answer, “The recipe’s an old family secret – I can’t tell you!” So it’s not a cooking show – mostly an eating show. There are shows about traditions of the various cultures in Singapore – Peranakans, Tamils, Bugis, and so forth, but mostly different aspects of Chinese.
And Channelnews Asia imports shows to fill in slots on Saturday nights. These are travel advertisements for Japan and Korea, respectively, to fill in the slots before the big show on the economics of rice farming in Thailand. We love the Japanese travel shows, because they always include baths. A man or couple of people – old cousins, middle-aged girlfriends, a small family, but never a woman alone – hop on a train or bus to some place in the mountains or along the coast. They look at shrines to the local Shinto deities, interview the inn owners, look into whatever quaint traditional products are made at the location. Then they get down to business: bathing and eating. Every single place in this program has hot pools or some specially-treated water that is mixed with herbs or minerals or bamboo charcoal or something (local specialty), and the visitors hop into the pools at the hotel, either gazing out at the scenery or inhaling the herbs or chatting with the other bathers. They discuss the quality of the water, its temperature, and its effects on their skin or health. Then they are shown eating the local specialties, which all too often feature some extremely identifiable sea animal which had been shown alive two minutes before. It’s FRESH! Then the visitors move on to some other place, happy to have experienced the blessings of this particular spot. Unless they pause after dinner to have a poetry-writing contest.
The Korea travel show tries for the same format, but doesn’t have the baths, so it’s not so funny. There’s a heckuva lot more eating to make up for it, though – almost always something grilled on sticks.