Sometimes I find the search for new things to watch on television is a little like the blackout you experience when you're given a gift card for your birthday.
You walk into the shop, spin around, confused, and try to work out what the bloody hell you'll get yourself out of the millions of things on offer.
So it is with TV, particularly when the endless possibilities of subscription television combine with digital to provide us with a smorgasbord that isn't quite reaching the eye-bleeding breadth of USA television, but is certainly a far wider range of choices than we were used to a decade ago.
Perhaps because of this, I find that a lot of my favourite TV discoveries these days happen by accident. Late at night or channel surfing through lunchtime, you stumble upon something that blows your mind.
That's how I discovered
Surviving Disaster:
Originating last year on the US' Spike network, it airs here on Discovery Channel (next episode is Wednesday at 9.30pm). Presented by "ex-Navy SEAL" Cade Courtley - that's him shouting at the back of the bus - the show is completely and utterly insane.
Effectively the brief seems to have been "danger is everywhere - particularly when brown people are involved - so get ready to cut sick in the name of survival".
The episode we watched, quite by accident, detailed what to do when a bunch of generic central casting "Middle Eastern" dudes (and a few possible Eastern Europeans for good measure) take your plane hostage with plastic knives and "show how little regard they have for human life" by slitting a flight attendant's throat.
Once they've done that, it's up to you to beat the brownies to the ground and then jam their noses up into their brains so "they'll dance for you".
I am deadly serious:
Not hands-on enough for you? What about a sleeper hold!?
That's right, it's a POTENTIALLY LETHAL MOVE. They could technically move Surviving Disaster to one of the DIY networks; after all, there's not much difference between "How To make a daisy-themed sunroom" and "How To pinch a terrorist in the carotid artery", is there?
The show favours a full-on, realistic™style in which Cade addresses the camera as if it were "you" sitting with him on the doomed commercial airliner/exploding bus/burning office building.
Mostly he does this with a bug-eyed tone that reminded me of a very angry bush baby:
It's completely demented. The scariest thing about it all, though, is not the disaster scenarios themselves, but the gung-ho way in which Cade doles out his advice, matter-of-factly talking about how to disable a terrorist or plug a gunshot wound.
On the latter tip, online fans of the show have
created a handy macro:
In short, if you have Foxtel and you're not watching this totally insane piece of sinister televisual genius, make sure to change your viewing habits.
You don't want Cade Courtley to make you dance for him.