If there is anything emotionally or spiritually wrong with you at all, may I prescribe four to seven hours of British daytime TV?
Americans, you may be rolling your eyes. The idea of spending even half of that with Savannah Guthrie, Carson Daly, Robin Roberts, and George Stephanopoulos presumably seems mind-numbing, if not downright punitive. (Although if you’re a Hoda Kotb fan, time is at a premium; she just announced her departure from Today after a 26-year run.)
The British morning shows are much less polished and produced—the sets and hosts both appear to have been plucked from Sainsbury’s, the Kroger of Britain—which is why they’re so much more interesting. In general, they are rolling, morning-long conversations sort of about the news, studded with just enough magazine-style segments to keep things from getting too, you know, real. (“Is Now a Good Time to Change Your Bank?” “How Often Should You Wash Your Bedsheets: Discuss!”)
Riots can rage outside the studio walls, but these shows will continue to agonize over whether it’s O.K. to reheat fish in the office’s communal microwave. The brain softens and relaxes. It’s all going to be O.K.
The most cosseting way to begin any morning is with BBC Breakfast, which starts at six a.m. (The first hour is strictly weather and news, told in a pleasing murmur by news anchors with slightly too much personality.) After orange juice, coffee, and toast, the move is to switch over to Good Morning Britain, ITV’s brasher and more Technicolor program, which rehashes what producers half noticed from the newspaper headlines.
Unlike Today, whose hosts are seared into the hippocampi of nearly all Americans, Good Morning Britain relies on around 30 journalists to rotate in, depending on topic and mood. They tend to be fortysomething Daily Mail readers who don’t necessarily agree with the Daily Mail; Piers Morgan was their shining North Star. They dress in suits and pencil dresses with three-quarter-length sleeves, like doomed interviewees for a regional-head-of-sales position.
Its final hour, when sparring hosts and guest argue over the hot topics of the day, is when things begin to get interesting. Should all of Britain’s extra-large Rottweilers be exterminated as a safety precaution? Should booing of all kinds be banned? When things get ugly, the director throws to a commercial break. Meanwhile, a weather ticker never stops reminding us of what the day holds in Cardiff, Plymouth, and Norwich.
Riots can rage outside the studio walls, but these shows will continue to agonize over whether it’s O.K. to reheat fish in the office’s communal microwave.
After that, you may as well call out sick from work and change back into pajamas before tucking into Lorraine, the soapy magazine-style show named after Lorraine Kelly, Britain’s unofficial mother-in-chief. (Unfortunately, it’s so rarely hosted by Lorraine these days that an X account now tracks her movements like she’s a private jet.) Lorraine leans toward the camera and talks sweetly, like you’ve just stirred from a coma and the doctors are still uncertain of your brain function. Then she chuckles on the sofa with an actor from something you half recognize, then she tells you your hour is up—see you again tomorrow. Hold on, when did—?
Then it’s time for the jewel in the daytime-TV crown, ITVX’s This Morning, which has been churning out vapid takes on news, current affairs, and household chores since 1988. (Why, yes, you can clean sneakers in a washing machine—here’s how!) Its hosts tend to become part of the national furniture. (After a brief, tumultuous scandal involving a young colleague and a vape, its current weekday stars are now Cat Deeley, former host of So You Think You Can Dance, and human polo shirt Ben Shephard.)
What’s so strange about This Morning is how much can happen over the course of an episode, and how little of it viewers remember afterward. Despite a 36-year run, the show’s memorable clips can be counted on one hand: Alison Hammond pushing a sailor into the sea and Gino D’Acampo losing his mind over a carbonara. It’s populated by some of the strangest people in Britain, in grocery-store clothing and makeup-chair glam, yammering about the best deals on credit cards and which sub-$10 rosés are on sale at Sainsbury’s.
By noon, somehow, British television diehards know less about the world than when they woke up. Then it’s time for Homes Under the Hammer, an 11 a.m. property-and-auction show that sort of exists for no one. In it, landlords buy houses at auction and then unenthusiastically renovate them. It somehow lasts an hour.
Those suffering in the dark cave of a romantic breakup may turn to the Jeremy Vine show. Vine has been a mainstay of British television and radio for years, and most of the people in the country recognize him, but none of them actually like him. He somehow manages to anger right-wingers, left-wingers, and centrists in equal measure. When his increasingly deranged callers make it on the air, he yells, “Hang on a minute!” and suffers from connectivity issues until they unceremoniously disappear.
Which brings us to ITV’s Loose Women, Britain’s answer to The View, with a worldview that skews Greater Manchester. Its 24 panelists are jockeying for airtime to such an extent that they are prone to blurting out any old thing, opinions forgotten almost as soon as they are said. What a feeling, to be trolled on Instagram comments for opinions you don’t even remember saying aloud!
But in the world of British daytime television, even controversies are short-lived. It is not there to be remembered. It exists solely to remove your brain from its skull, where it is sudsed clean, dried with a fluffy towel, shown a couple of advertisements for Nescafé cappuccino sachets, and placed gently back in again, smooth and pink and warm. See you bright and early tomorrow.
Joel Golby is a writer for The Guardian and Vice and the author of Four Stars
