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Antiques Roadshow
1979 · TV series · documentary · 58 min episodes · 49 seasons
Antiques Roadshow is a British television show in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom to appraise antiques brought in by local people. It has been running since 1979. There are also international versions of the programme.
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7 comments on Hacker News
Long long time ago buddy, I ditched TV 15+ years ago, can't even remember exactly when.
I only buy large monitors and mount them on my wall.
At first I only watched selfhosted media, but last 8 years it's been more and more Youtube. I'm not too happy about it, would like to wean myself off it.
I'm speaking from my own perspective here but scripted media is something I only watch socially, if my partner wants to watch with me. And I end up on my computer trying to type softly next to them.
All scripted media just seems so predictable now, I'm like Stan in that one South Park episode lol.
It also seems manipulative. I can see how a lot of shows just milk the story for more episodes until they can't milk it anymore. It doesn't seem genuine anymore, maybe it never was? Ratings have always existed, in my lifetime.
But the point is that the only newly produced content I watch is just regular people. One example is Antiques Roadshow, it's boring, maybe even "slow" TV, but it's real people. I much prefer watching real people than characters.
Something that really bugs me now is live action characters, I'd actually prefer cartoon characters. Because everything is so unreal and over the top, it might as well be a cartoon.
Yeah. Like they picked it up at a garage sale on the cheap.
Be on the lookout for malaria appraisals on coming episodes of the Antiques Roadshow!
edit: wow, jokes are not well-received I guess
I know as a kid I had a ton of "collections" - Pez, coins, stamps, Pokemon cards, Nintendo games, postcards, baseball cards, old newspapers, books.
For many of those, I would build up and hold on to things because I thought they'd be valuable some day, or maybe future kids/grandkids would benefit from having something handed down. I also like history and really enjoy seeing antique craftsmanship.
Even though stuff like the Beanie Baby craze crested and fell pretty quickly, you still have shows like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars that show all of those hidden gems. Or, in the coin world, you'd read about some trove of uncirculated buffalo nickels being discovered in an attic somewhere. Or, if you ever go to the Andy Warhol museum, there's a whole section dedicated to his "time capsules" of collected mundane stuff, much of which ends up providing some kind of historical value.
When I was a kid, no one told me about putting money into mutual funds and compound interest (or if they did I didn't listen), let alone the principle of survivorship bias. Besides, that stuff is boring compared to the Star Wars Episode I Pez collection and commemorative Pepsi cans[1]. If I had held on to my 20 our of 24 opened cans, maybe I could have sold them for 30 bucks or so!
I've been having a lot of reality checks as I get older. I kept my Star Wars prequel novelizations in good condition, but I can also get a book in similar condition on Amazon for 5 or 6 bucks. And I never read my parents' favorite fiction books, so there's a solid chance that my kids won't care either. Maybe in the midst of getting rid of these things I'll get rid of the one thing that could be worth thousands in a generation or two, but that's like playing the lottery, isn't it?
[1]: www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Episode-1-Exclusive-Pepsi-Display-Collectors-Item-Set-of-24-Cans-/253064909025
Anyone interested in this era/design would do well to look at other Railway posters of the age[1]. There's something so utterly charming about this bye-gone era. A lot of the original posters change hands for not-inconsiderable amounts of money and one can see why, true design outlasts the fashion of the day.
Those with access to BBC should also checkout the 'Age of Travel' episode of Antiques Roadshow that was on Sunday, very relevant.[2]
[1] http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0822pdm/antiques-roadshow-series-39-10-golden-age-of-travel-special
Cheap imitations are old as time. You ever watch antiques roadshow? Every episode there's at least one knockoff. And even those can be 100+ years old and still worth money.a knockoff just means people like the design.
> Carl Meredith is one local viewer upset about Ovation’s removal from his Time Warner lineup. Meredith and his wife, who live near Clayton, are big fans of Ovation’s reruns of the original British version of “Antiques Roadshow.” Meredith said he had his DVR set to record the episodes during the day, and the couple would watch them together at night. Now, he gets a blue screen telling him Time Warner Cable no longer carries Ovation.
That's a rather left-field choice of show to enjoy, and in most of these discussions reruns (especially esoteric ones) don't get a lot of focus. Pundits tend to focus on the newest episode of, say, Homeland as the item worth buying. The Merediths show us that there is more to that puzzle.
The à la carte selection of and payment for individual shows, as opposed to individual channels, may have some merit after all; if you read between the lines, they don't want Ovation. They want reruns of British Antiques Roadshow, and Ovation just happened to have them. This couple is already down the road toward a different model, too, since they utilize their DVR to time-shift the episodes anyway.
The downside to shifting to paying for shows is (the often useful) local network affiliates, live sports programming, real-time news, and so forth, which are problems yet to be solved. Basically, anything live. I think the generation that's in their 20s and 30s now, though, is more palatable to this kind of model, and we're very likely on the way.
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Other point I'd like to make here is that British Antiques Roadshow is produced by the BBC, who haven't quite figured out the United States yet. Different legal systems force them to make real bummers, like rescoring Top Gear since they have a very liberal licence to use popular music in the UK and America is a very different picture. In many Top Gear films, the music is half of the equation[1] and its replacement with stock light rock jams is a real shame. Heard some of that in the Best of Top Gear edits that BBC America just aired. That's also probably why they have to be really aggressive on YouTube, and a lot of the unofficial clips of Top Gear on YouTube have been disappearing, replaced by official edits following the same rules.
A lot of Americans, myself included, are chomping at the bit for Top Gear but the BBC finds itself having to edit it to remove British-specific jokes (which I disagree with) or rescoring as mentioned above (which is just unfortunate). They're pretty lax on QI on YouTube, though, which is just great; I've seen all of QI XL Series J so far, not far behind Britain.
[1]: Example from last series, brilliantly written, shot, edited, and scored: http://vimeo.com/40226173
Notice how he/she doesn't use the word movie/film in his rant. How do you expect to watch movies without a TV? A laptop/monitor is not the answer.
I never watch TV shows either except for Mary Tyler Moore on MeTV and Antiques Roadshow occasionally.