BBC Stockholm Syndrome?

Well, for all the time I spent complaining about British television when I lived in St Andrews, I have really come around and now I am obsessed with the BBC! Or, more specifically, with the BBC iPlayer website that allows me to watch BBC shows online for free after they've aired on television.

Since, in the UK, televisions shows tend to only run between 6-9 episodes at random times throughout the year, the rest of prime time is filled with reality trash, cooking shows and, best of all, documentaries about a wide variety of subjects.

In the past two weeks, I have watched ...
1. The Great Contemporary Art Bubble
(a show about the outrageous prices contemporary art was fetching until after the credit crunch started)
2. The South Pacific
(a series telling all about how the plants and animals and people came to be on some of the most remote islands in the world)
3. The Incredible Human Journey
(a series explaining how we left Africa and journeyed around the world. Apparently, everyone outside of Africa is related to a small group that left via the Sinai peninsula about 100,000 years ago!)
4. Simon Schama's John Donne
(Schama is an academic and a TV presenter, he told us all about John Donne while an actress [Harry Potter's mother] recited his poetry, inter cut with scenes of the two of them discussing the poetry. Awesome, because I really like John Donne.)
5. Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor
(a show about the 47 million year old fossil that was found in Germany that shows both lemur [our distant cousins] and monkey/ape/human characteristics, basically the Missing Link)
6. Storyville: Every Good Marriage Begins with Tears
(a show about 2 British-Bangladeshi sisters who have arranged marriages in Bangladesh, and how it works out or doesn't)
7. Feasts: Japan's Naked Man Festival
(a show about a British man who participates in the Naked Man Festival in a small town in Japan. That was some crazy drunken nakedness!)

And many, many more. There are lots of quiz shows as well, which are always my favorite. Basically, it's like watching the Discovery channel, except that there are lots of documentaries about people too. Everyday I'm excited about going to the website to see what's new! Unfortunately, I don't think you can see it if you're outside the UK (but we're supposed to be getting Hulu over here! Nyah-nyah!), but I am really enjoying it!