Frances Grant: When influence goes bad

Why is it only negative qualities such as violent, antisocial behaviour that are transferable through watching too much television? You'd think after years of unprotected exposure to their sunniness, we'd all be as nice as Judy, Carol or John.

But why do we worry so much about the effects of telly on kids — witness all the hand-wringing over violent cartoons — when telly's bad influence on adults is so much more in evidence?

Nearly every reality makeover or dating show, or celebrity-nobody challenge, is taking grown-up people straight back down the road to childhood. The playground values of physical strength and good looks rule. The ability to boss, be aggressive or stir up trouble wins hands-down when the only stakes are getting attention.

Telly drama isn't faring much better. The regression isn't good for audience or actors alike, a fact bemoaned by actor Tom Courtenay in an interview on the state of British TV.

"I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man," he said. "But when I was young there used to be plays on TV with interesting actors. Paul Scofield doing Henry IV. Olivier doing Ibsen. Now soaps have bred TV stars and it's frightening how bad some of them are. Everything these days is about doctors, cops and robbers, or autopsies. The dead are very popular."

While it is possible that a programme line-up consisting solely of tormented British monarchs or suicidal Norwegians might be a bit heavy for a weeknight after work, the man has a point about the lack of challenge for many in the acting profession.

There must be a lot of auditions to play this week's dead body in CSI and spin-offs going on out there. Even a top-notch drama such as Six Feet Under requires most of its guests to spend a fair bit of time lying about on a slab.

The pernicious effects of telly on people far beyond the age of reason are all too clear, as anyone working at Auckland's Viaduct restaurant strip will tell you when another feral pack of women, clearly heavily under the influence of Sex and the City, teeter up on their heels.

The New York fantasy apparently comes with a hugely inflated sense of entitlement to attention from the waiting staff in the disappointing absence of arrays of good-looking, well-heeled and available men.

Yes, the bad influences are as clear as the dinner-plate sized fake flowers that Carrie used to sport on her head or her clothes. But as the comedy grinds its way through its final season, it's time to report that an Australian newspaper has asked the logical question: if watching violence on TV leads to violent antisocial behaviour, does watching Sex and the City lead to having sex in the city?

Sadly, it appears not: "While US research published in Developmental Psychology says television drives children to violence, it is unlikely watching TV with a high level of sexual content influences viewers to be promiscuous."

And even more tragically, it appears that while telly shows are getting more and more sexually explicit, this is peep show stuff, symptomatic of the socially isolated individual trying to satisfy the need to know what goes on in the lives of others.

When it comes to sexual behaviour, apparently, there are forces — evolutionary, cultural — which exert far more influence than sitcoms with explicit content. If only the same were true when it came to Carrie's clothes.