Proving a Point

In the recent post "A Surfeit of Suggestions" I mentioned the fact that most Greek homes seem to have their own blood pressure apparatus. I also said how weird that would be to most of us Brits. I don't think I've ever known anyone in the UK to have their own blood pressure monitor/machine, whereas here, you only have to mention your health during a leisurely coffee morning with friends and they'll whip it out of a drawer and have it strapped around your upper arm before you can say Doctor Kildare (or maybe these days "House"?).

I shall proceed to prove the point with the photos below. Take a look at these, peeps...

Now what's that all about you cry? I'll tell you. Those snaps were all taken during a recent episode of ΜΗΝ ΑΡΧΙΖΕΙΣ ΤΗ ΜΟΥΡΜΟΥΡΑ, a popular sitcom currently running three nights a week on Greek TV. That title translates into something like "Don't start grumbling" - or as we'd probably say in current UK-speak - "Don't START!"

Actually, I still have to say that most Greek TV is awful by comparison with the quality of drama and comedy in the UK. "Mourmoura" though, is the exception. It's excellent, brilliantly well acted and also extremely funny. It's basically three different couples, each of a different generation, who never actually meet eachother, in fact they don't even know eachother, but the viewer is a voyeur into their domestic situation. 

There's the young twenty-something couple (Vaso and Hari), living together in an Athens apartment. She works as a nurse and he's basically a house-husband with vain aspirations of becoming a successful musician. There's a retired couple (Mina and Voula) who constantly disagree over the wife's desire to travel and the husband's reluctance to do so. The third couple is the one I photographed above. That's Ilias and Marina, she's a neurotic houswife who's basically going through a perpetual mid-life crisis and he's an accountant with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He also constantly chides his wife Marina over the credit card bills he receives. What makes it sharp is the writing, since it is really keen observation of every couple's regular niggles and narks and thus every viewer watches and squirms, seeing their own lives played out by the three couples. How often when my dearly beloved significant other and I are watching it do we cast surreptitious glances at eachother along the sofa as we see ourselves in the scenes we're watching. Squirm city folks, trust me.

The episode we were watching just last week, though, really had me shouting "THERE! See? What did I TELL you?" at the screen as Ilias is all wound up about something and so Marina flips open a kitchen drawer and whips out the blood pressure machine and takes her husband's blood pressure, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

If that doesn't bear out what I said in the other post folks, what does, eh?