On watching ‘All aboard: the sleigh ride’
With Christmas dinners consumed, Christmas gifts exchanged, Christmas specials receding in a flurry of clichés more opaque than a blizzard, maybe the time was right for a little bit of TV novelty. At this point, enter ‘All aboard; the sleigh ride’. This was two hours of so-called ‘slow TV’ – a real time journey across snowy wastes by reindeer sleigh. There was no incidental music, no commentary, and no sound besides the crunching of feet and hooves on snow and the soft tinkling of bells on the harnesses. Here’s the thing, though, it was strangely captivating. I only saw about 25 minutes of the programme, but there was a magnetism to it unlike any other TV over this Christmas. I felt no inclination to ‘react’ on a second screen, and little inclination to look away, either.
Could there be a future for this kind of television in a crowded and over-stimulated media landscape, I wonder? Click here to watch the whole programme.
