"Slow TV" Might Be Hollywood's Stupidest New Trend
Idiomatic linguists may soon have to come up with a new meaning for "watching paint dry," if Hollywood has anything to say about it—because literally watching paint dry is on the fast-track to becoming must-see TV.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, reality producers LMNO Productions, the once-renowned production company behind The Little Couple and I Get That A Lot, have just bought the rights to Norwegian network NRK's Slow TV—a programming alternative to the neck-breaking pace of traditional 22 minute reality programs. Slow TV, seemingly born of a producer once forgetting to turn the camera off all day and just deciding to go with it, once aired half-day broadcast of logs burning in a fire. Similar slow shows display other mundane happenings in real time: 18 hours of salmon fishing (not the excruciatingly boring and equally glacial Emily Blunt version set in Yemen, actual salmon fishing), a 134 hour ship's journey up the Norwegian coast, and even an upcoming thriller about knitting in real time.
Even though Slow TV sounds rather dull at first, LMNO's SVP of development calls the format "captivating." NRK's head of development refers to it as "brave." The agent who brokered the deal thinks its "audacious." Bet you all feel pretty stupid now for wasting those five minutes watching Steven, Trishelle and Brynn have a hot tub threesome on The Real World, when you could have spent ten days watching a freight liner quietly creep up the coast of Scandinavia.
