Hottest TV in Norway
(Well, they are a bit strange)
IN Norway, it has proved a roaring – if unlikely – success.
Twelve hours of watching a blazing fireplace on screen sounds about as much fun as watching QPR v Norwich, but “slow TV” is a big hit in the Scandinavian country.
National broadcaster NRK showed the burning logs at PEAK TIME on Friday night, while experts discussed how best to build a real fire.
And the BBC will soon be slowing pulses over here after buying the British rights to similar shows.
Here, a telly critic and journalist with Norwegian national newspaper Dagbladet gives his verdict.
I CAME home late from a night out and turned on the TV to see what this strange thing was like.
It was relaxing to have just the fire and the crackling sound. Now and then, a person came to put a bit of wood on.
It’s not as good as the real thing but I don’t have a fireplace. And this was much easier than building a real fire.
On the first part of the show, guests talked about how best to build a fire and what kind of wood you need.
They suggested things you could do in front of the fire, such as reading, talking to friends or just watching the images. Poetry was read out at times. We live in a cold, inaccessible land.
The show reminded us of that. One of the best-selling books of the past few years here was about wood and fires.
When it came out everyone was talking about how they chopped and stored their wood. I wasn’t shocked when I heard NRK were showing a fireplace for 12 hours. They have some strange programmes. They had a live feed for six days of a ship sailing up the fjords watched by THREE MILLION.
They also screened a complete train journey from Oslo to Bergen.
Here it’s known as slow TV.
Norwegians seem to like telly where nothing happens. We like to be a bit strange.
We also like to read in British newspapers that we are a bit strange.
The BBC have bought the rights to the ship programme. So slow TV will be coming to you soon.