The soulless box known as the television reflects our dead stares on its cold screen as it depicts traumatising scenes. Television channels churn out a foul gristle that stinks of pestilence and death, convincing viewers that we live in a heartless world where everybody and everything is out to get you – or at least bore you. Here are some of the worst visions of hell (but fantastic visiting opportunities) from the TV world. (Our featured image is by Matt Kowal.)
If there is such a thing as TV hell, it follows that there must be TV heaven destinations. Want to see seven of them? Follow this link.
Lost – Hawaii, USA
The island in Lost is infested with psychopaths and polar bears, while insane experiments there have destroyed the fabric of space-time itself.
Although the show is filmed in beautiful Hawaii, it is relentless in convincing viewers that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable obstacle course, and that flashbacks always serve as allegories for current events.
Father Ted – County Clare, Ireland
In the popular Irish sitcom, Father Ted was sent to Craggy Island as a punishment for gambling away church funds. He’s surrounded by buffoons and loons, while the weather is always cold and usually raining.
The show was filmed mainly in County Clare, but that’s neither here nor there – for somebody whose job it is to guide people to heaven, he seems to be sitting in the Irish version of hell.
Eastenders – London, England
Eastenders is set in a tiny cursed part of London where at least one resident dies every Christmas and the local pub constantly gets burnt down.
Walford is actually Bow, a short stop from where the Olympics took place, but there are no record breakers here, just alcoholics and murderers.
Northern Exposure – Alaska, USA
Northern Exposure is set in a town so cold that the local moose assume all the people have frozen to death so they just wander about vandalising things.
The USA is seen as the land of plenty and opportunity, but Alaska mainly has plenty of empty space and many opportunities for nature to kill you.
Although Northern Exposure was a comedy, the shadow of icy death undeniably surrounded it.
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet – Dusseldorf, Germany
Yet another comedy depicting a miserable situation – being a builder in Germany. Not only were the main characters incapable of speaking the language of the country they were residing in, but their northern accents meant that even the most distinguished linguists Germany had to offer were at a loss when trying to comprehend even an iota of what was being said to them.
This lack of communication created a bumbling tragedy of errors that left all seething with hate for each other and setting back England-Germany relations a decade or two.
Murder She Wrote – Cabot Cove, Maine, USA
The novelist Jessica Fletcher is surrounded by death. Not only does she obsessively write about murder most foul, but her existence is mired in it.
Her picturesque hometown of Cabot Cove has the extreme murder rate of around one in 50, easily making it the most dangerous place in the USA, if not the world. The town is supposedly in Maine in the north east of the States, much like the similar area of Cape Cod, but filming was duplicitously done in California, thousands of miles away, thus adding to a real-life sense that there’s something distinctly evil about the place.
The Sopranos – New Jersey, USA
According to The Sopranos, HBO’s hit drama, the Mafia completely own everybody and everything in New Jersey. From the smallest shop to local politicians, all and sundry appear to be unavoidably leashed to violent extortionists who run degrading strip bars and inefficient waste management companies.
One particular episode saw two of these criminals chasing down another rival murderer through the harsh forest scenery of the Pine Barrens, which, as the name implies, is mostly barren pines. They nearly freeze to death, unsurprisingly.
