Hey everyone, welcome to podcast number five and welcome to New Year’s Eve 2023.

At the end of each year I go back and have a look at all the things I’ve watched on TV in the previous year.

Some of you would have seen that I’ve done a post about Stevie TV and that gives you some insight into how I track what I’m watching.

Generally speaking at the end of each year I’ll do a blog post which posts on Twitter or X as it’s now known.

It just lists everything I’ve watched.

I thought I would do something a bit different this year given that I am doing podcasts and audio blogs and actually talk about my Stevie TV year in review rather than just typing about it.

So here we go.

To start off I’m going to talk about my top three shows of this year and it took me a little bit of time to think about what they were going to be but my first one had to be the first one there was no other option and that was The Last of Us.

For those of you that don’t know The Last of Us is a video game probably one of the best video games I’ve ever played.

It’s essentially post-apocalyptic where there’s two people Ellie and Joel trying to survive trying to find the cure to what’s happening and the TV show brings that to life.

Trying to do this without doing any spoilers by the way in case you haven’t seen it but a really good TV show.

It kept nicely to the game but changed bits in the right way to make it really worthwhile and a great watch.

I highly recommend it.

Season 2 is coming.

I’ll be honest with all the writer strikes etc I don’t know when but I’m sort of thinking 2025 so a little while away yet at least another year to go but highly recommend The Last of Us.

Really enjoyed it and I wish there was more right now to watch.

My next one took a little bit of a debate because I loved the first two seasons.

Season 3 was the final season.

My second show is Ted Lasso.

I’m not a football fan.

I didn’t even really know who Ted Lasso was.

I know there was mentions of him in adverts on the Super Bowl.

Again don’t really watch the Super Bowl.

Only in it for the adverts to be fair.

So I didn’t really know who Ted was.

I didn’t know what to expect but I loved it.

Really really good.

Really really funny.

Seasons 1 & 2 were perfect.

Season 3 was good but not as good as the first two and I think there was a part of that because you knew it was ending.

You knew there wasn’t to be any more so you were a little bit disappointed but even with that in mind definitely recommend watching it even if you don’t like football.

Give it a go.

And then my third show, again I was late to the party with this last year.

Didn’t really understand what it was but everyone recommended to me to watch Sex Education on Netflix.

So I binged the first few seasons really really quickly and loved it and then this year we saw the final season of Sex Education and again loved it as well.

A really really good show to watch.

Quite emotional in places.

You get switched around in terms of whose sides are on quite a lot whether it’s Team Ruby or Team Maeve.

I ended as Team Ruby because I felt like she treated Otis better and just a really good show.

Wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

Really funny.

Really easy to watch.

Highly recommend it.

So they are my top three.

The Last of Us, Ted Lasso, Sex Education and if you haven’t seen any of them I highly recommend watching them.

They’re definitely worth it.

Onto some honourable mentions or shows that I was surprised I watched.

Perhaps didn’t want to talk about but feel like I should just admit it because you’re gonna see it anyway and just give my point of view of why I watch these shows.

So we’re gonna start out with Below Deck.

I became a Below Deck fan last year I think and again binged loads of it.

Just the original Below Deck to start with with Captain Lee etc.

I just loved it.

You could just put it on, not pay much attention and just get on with whatever else you were doing and just watch it and it was really really binge worthy.

So I got through about nine or ten seasons of Below Deck much quicker than I’d like to admit last year.

But then I started picking up this spin-off so Below Deck Mediterranean, Below Deck Down Under and Below Deck Adventure.

They’re all very similar.

All follow a very similar premise.

Some really rich people charter a boat or a yacht shall I say for a few days and essentially very similar things happen every episode.

The guests get too drunk, the crew get up to things they shouldn’t, someone falls in the water.

Very very similar.

I highly recommend it if you don’t want to pay much attention and you want to put something on.

They’re only about half an hour each episode.

Definitely worth it.

The next one which I think has become a bit of a national treasure, national favorite is Clarkson’s Farm.

Clarkson’s Farm season 2 was on this year.

You either love him or you hate him.

Again he’s a bit like Marmite but he’s doing a really good job showing what farming is like and the issues that farmers have to deal with and the bureaucracy that we have in this country and the fact that farmers are so underpaid.

A lot of them don’t make money and just how hard it really is.

But he’s brought it to life for all of us to see.

I know loads of people that have watched Clarkson’s Farm.

Some weren’t a fan of Jeremy Clarkson but still watched it.

They ended it and they are a fan of Jeremy Clarkson.

It’s just a really good insight into what farming life is like in the UK.

So definitely recommend that.

Season 3 I believe is coming next year and then there’s already a season 4 that’s been commissioned as well.

So two more seasons of Clarkson’s Farm to come which is going to be incredible.

The final one which I’ve debated talking about because I’ve kept it between my close friends and they’re also the ones that made me do this as well.

But everyone at work was talking about Married at First Sight particularly Married at First Sight Australia and they were like do I watch it?

And I was like no I’ve seen bits of it on Gogglebox.

That’s all I needed to see.

Didn’t really need to be dragged into watching Married at First Sight.

But everyone was like you have to.

You’ve got to watch it.

It’s some of the best TV you’ll ever watch and I wasn’t convinced for a long time.

It took them a while to convince me to finally watch it.

I eventually relented and I sort of said right where do I start?

There’s 10 seasons out there just for Australia.

There’s spin-offs in various countries including Married at First Sight UK.

Where do I start?

Because I haven’t got the time to watch all of it.

And their recommendation was Married at First Sight Australia.

I believe it was Married at First Sight Australia season 9.

It was the series that had Olivia in it, had Dominica in it, it had Andrew in it, it had Al in it, had Ella in it etc.

It was that season and I went through probably like 17 episodes and I was like it’s alright I can watch it but it’s not the amazing TV show everyone was telling me it’s going to be.

And then around episode 17-18 it all changed.

They went away to the the married retreat or whatever it’s called.

Massive drama kicked off.

The glass was broken and that’s all I’m gonna say.

And then from that point on it seemed to go absolutely bonkers.

There was lots of accusations, a lot of behind your back kind of stuff going on with people cheating on each other and you know getting upset with each other and like proper arguments, stuff like that.

And it was at that point it got really exciting and I realized this is why I’m watching it.

This is why I need to watch it.

So I binged watched Married at First Sight just season 9 in less than a couple of weeks and I loved it.

It was really good in the end actually.

I’m glad I did watch it but the question is would I watch more?

I don’t think so.

A.

because there’s so much out there I don’t know where I would start.

I haven’t got the time of day to watch all of it and B.

I just think a lot of it’s gonna be really similar stuff.

Now I know this has come from me who loves below deck.

Every episode is essentially the same but Married at First Sight is at least an hour every episode.

Some of them were like an hour and a half, hour and 20 minutes.

It’s a bigger investment and I just don’t think I can do it.

So unless I literally run out of other stuff to watch I don’t think I’ll be watching Married at First Sight again.

But never say never.

So they were my honourable mentions of things that I’m glad I watched this year and I do recommend them as well especially if you need to pass some time.

So this is where we get to the important details.

How much you’ve actually watched.

So in total this year I’ve watched 492 hours of TV and that equates to roughly 20 days of my life and that’s not taking into account working or sleeping.

So if it didn’t work or didn’t sleep it’d be about 20 days of my life watching TV in 2023.

Believe it or not that’s significantly down on the last couple of years.

2022 I watched 571 hours of TV.

2021 I watched 637 hours of TV and then 2020 I watched 701 hours on TV.

The reason is why it was so high in 2020 and 2021 was Covid.

So I think 2023 is actually a more accurate representation of roughly speaking how much TV I watch.

There’s been some great stuff out there and plenty of stuff that I haven’t spoken about so you can see it in the full list that I’m gonna post on the blog as well.

So there we go that was my Stevie TV review of 2023.

Whilst I’m here I hope everyone had a really good 2023.

A good Christmas in the last week or so and I’ll take this opportunity to say Happy New Year for 2024.

I hope everyone has an amazing time.

There will be more Stevie TV.

Thanks for listening.

Happy New Year everyone!