VIOLENCE AND EVEN MORE VIOLENCE - whatever happened to “Wenzu u Rozi”?

I do not watch our local drama productions on television. Nothing has ever even approached the standard of George Zammit’s “Wenzu u Rozi” and Narcy Calamatta’s superb acting.

This was good clean humour and fun that one could sit back, enjoy and have a continual laugh at all the arguments, scrapes and situations that “Wenzu” was interminably embroiled in.

My viewing nowadays is restricted to continual news bulletins (local and foreign), current affairs discussion programmes, football matches – mostly English Premier – and British comedy programmes on BBC. Locally I switch from TVM to ONE to TVM2 and do not bother with NET, never have and never will. All the things they invent can be seen on the internet versions of “The Times of Malta” and “The Malta Independent” anyway …

Nevertheless, I have a tv alongside my computer and tv is switched on virtually 24/7 and so I do glance very often to see what’s going on.

There is a glut of “teleshopping” advertising features in most of which the person delivering the sales talks shouts, badgers and almost bully’s a viewer to buy the product. Yes, our tv stations need the advertising money but cannot the salespersons be more professional and more subtle?

At other times I catch a bit of drama.

All one sees are guns, wooden clubs and metal bars being brandished; men punching the hell out of each other; men hitting women, somebody kicking the stuffing out of somebody else as they lie sprawled on the ground, frightened children being bullied – and generally – a continuous chain of gratuitous violence.

IN CONTRAST, when last week a grandmother walked into a school in Vittoriosa and assaulted the headmistress, shock and dismay reverberated everywhere while Adrian Delia pounced on the occasion to blame Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and continue his theme that everybody is living in fear, people or not letting their children go out, blah, blah.

IN ADDITION, speaker after speaker appears in all sorts of discussion programmes and interviews to condemn domestic violence, violence against women, violence against children, violence against the Police, the need for respect, the need for anger management and so on, and so forth.

Somehow, the two ends just do not meet! Having said that, the standards of local teledramas are abysmally low, and seem to pander to equally small minds.

Wishing all a good day.

ALBERT JEROME FENECH