Lately I've been watching a lot of BBC America. The satellite dish is out of alignment -- it has been for a while, but nobody feels like climbing up on the roof to fix it -- and doesn't transmit properly to either my TV up in the attic or the big TV downstairs in the living room. The only TV that hasn't been affected is the one in the downstairs guestroom, so my mother and I usually both wind up in there in the evening. She's a big fan of British television, so when I don't whine loudly enough to get my way, that's usually what we end up watching.

Something I've noticed about these BBC produced programs (née programmes -- I am an American, after all [don't call me a Yank, I'm Southern]) is that they tend to cast real people. Real, honest-to-God, average looking, not necessarily unattractive but certainly not uncommonly beautiful, people.

Over here, Hollywood only casts pretty people. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, everyone on television here is beautiful. I'm not even going to get into how this creates an unrealistic standard of beauty and leads teenage girls to develop eating disorders in order to meet that standard and yadda yadda. It's just annoying to see a supposed average American sit-com family where everyone looks like Barbie and Ken.

So it's nice to see TV stars who look like people I could run into at Wal-Mart. I kind of enjoy seeing leading men who aren't Addonises, and I particularly like seeing leading ladies who aren't all liposuctioned and silicon-molded into a perfect form, but who, like real women, come in all shapes and sizes, and are still treated like beautiful women.

This is not to say that the UK doesn't have it's share of Beautiful People, but it's nice to see that those people don't create the standard; and the shows are possibly even more entertaining simply because the stars do look like regular folks you could meet in the street.

Wouldn't it be nice if Hollywood would get a clue?