The television here in Singapore is, in my opinion, often of dubious viewing quality. For starters there are a number of home grown productions, usually sitcoms like "Phua Chu Kang (PCK)" which stars local TV actor/presenter Gurmit Singh as a yellow booted building contractor) or light documentaries that feature local celebs touring local restaurants. Alternatively, the Chinese language channel, appears to have a propensity for showing local (and Korean/Hong Kong) soap style drama's. The ones I have seen were like "As the World Turns" on speed, and seem to go for ever and make for strangely compulsive viewing!
On the other hand, I am happy to say that local versions of some of the popular reality TV shows haven't hit the Singapore small screen, so we haven't yet had to endure a Singaporean version of "Big Brother" (12 Ah beng housemates sealed in a compound with at an undisclosed location in Toa Payoh, their every move caught on camera with a daily update show presented by Gurmit Singh), or perhaps "The Singaporean Apprentice" (where 16 NUS graduates fight for a job at Mediacorp as PA to Mediacorp Artiste Gurmit Singh) or even "Survivor: Ubin" ( with 10 NSmen castaways abandoned in a quarry on Pulau Ubin faced with Gurmit delivering the endurance challenges and presiding over the regular Tribal Council).
Summer of 2004 though, did bring us Singapore Idol, with 1,000's of popstar wanabes filling the Singapore convention centre with the combined charisma of something really very uncharismatic. And who was selected to be Singapore's Ryan Seacrest? Well none other than, you guessed it, Gurmit Singh.
Amazingly, American reality TV did actually venture to Singapore. Competitors from season 3 of the Amazing race, were routed through Singapore en route from KL I think, and their 'detour' involved driving into the Singapore HDB heartlands and locating Gurmit, in character as yellow booted PCK, to pick up their clue.
If I ever have a son I shall name him Gurmit!
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