As a college student, I don’t really get much time to watch TV. When I do, it’s usually in the form of binge watching on Netflix or sitting down to watch a show that I regularly follow when it comes on every week. It has been a really long time since I just sat and watched television because there was nothing else to do or turned on the TV and actively looked for something to watch. In Ireland, however, most people turn on the TV as soon as they come home and turn off the TV right before they go to bed. The TV is almost always on in every Irish living room and most conversations are held with the TV on. At first, I had a hard time adjusting to this. In the US, it’s considered rude to be talking to someone and watching TV at the same time. Over time, I’ve actually gotten really used to the TV (or as they say here, the telly) being on all the time and it even feels a little weird when it’s not on. If there doesn’t happen to be anything particularly good on at any given time, my roommates and I will typically put on Starz, which is a music channel that will just play the most popular current songs on repeat. This has led me to unofficially rename our apartment “Club 36” because we have pop music playing all the time. Coming in from class to see music videos playing kind of takes me back to when I was in middle school and I would watch TRL after school, so my experience has been nostalgic in a weird way. Another thing that I find nostalgic about the television culture here is the commercials. In the US, commercials have changed a lot on the past few years. A lot of them now are really subtle and infused with indie music. The commercials in Ireland, however, are mostly geared and making people laugh at feature a lot of slapstick humor, sort of like the ones I used to see in the US when I was younger. You will often hear Irish people talking about what commercials they think are funny or asking their friends if they’ve seen the new commercial for something. Also, many Irish people have told me that a good way of coming to understand their culture is through watching a show called Father Ted. Father Ted is basically the Full House of Ireland because it was a show that aired in the 90s and has since been cancelled. However, absolutely everyone has seen mostly every episode and still makes jokes from it. shortly after we arrived, my Irish roommate actually showed us an episode on Youtube so that we could get what everyone is talking about. I also attended a kayak club meeting where they showed us an episode of Father Ted so that the visiting students would pick up on some of the jokes that the club makes. As nice as it has been to get well acclimated to Ireland’s TV-watching culture, one of the things that worries me now about going back to the US is all of the time I’m probably going to spend with the TV on when I get home.
