Boring TV a Hit in Norway; US Version On the Way

After hearing how they do things in Norway, you’ll never complain about nothing good being on TV again.There’s a movement in Norwegian television called “slow tv”, and it features some of the most boring programs you could ever imagine.

It has featured a seven hour train ride, eight hours of knitting, and eighteen hours of salmon swimming upstream. The reason its in the news is because its working; people are tuning in to watch mundane events like firewood being cut and burned; a 134 hour program of a ship navigating Norway’s fjords drew 3 million viewers.

If this sounds good to you, take heart; an American version is on the way, but its not clear exactly what the program will be. Before you dismiss it as too dull for Americans, think about how some of today’s reality programs would have sounded 25 years ago, like see which chef can make a better dish out of the same ingredients, for example.