Ultra-popular endless series on tribes of really cute mongeese ( or –gooses) filmed in southern India living in overcrowded tenements, sponsoring gang warfare, fomenting landlord disputes and revealing all other symptoms of being raggedy-ass slum dwellers.  Often attacked by cobras, kraits, fakirs, Mongols, thugees and the old Indian Rope Trick.  Usually survive through sheer animal cunning and political skills.  As good as any soap opera, with characters a lot more human.    30 min.

  Hosted by renegade zoologist G’Dye O’Konvict (deceased), a giant survey of species and genuses and that stuff, with startling close-up footage of creatures biting, clawing, crushing and digesting each other, while the host personally wrestles hippos, moose, pandas and errant wallabies.  Bloody scenes worthy of Gille de Rais or Madame Tussaud, in exquisite slo-mo with stentorian sound of cries, gulping and unmuted belching. 65 min. super-stereo.

Merry show on building or refurbishing dog houses to high architectural standards and Vitruvian ideals.  Hosted by Scottie R. Dale, noted canine architect and fashion guru.  Experts creep into small dwellings, fumigate them and work outward to make a dwelling fit for a doggie monarch.  Audience votes on best, cutest, most likely to annoy neighbors, etc.  Dogs react by eating, sleeping, scent-marking, etc. Winner of Woof Award, 2002.  36 min.

Regis Fildbun leads team of professional vandals who enter a home, utterly defile it and leave before the family returns from a fool’s errand set up for them.  Filmed aftermath hilarious and unpredictable, up to and including heart attacks, strokes, psychotic episodes, etc.  Reelity TV at its best!  Follow-up by reconstruction squad which restores and updates home to placate host family, show off new tips on fixing crappy places.  Not for the squeamish.  55 min. 

With carpenter-genius Wally Wodewurm, popular show on renovating savagely deteriorated houses of no value into showpieces with vast mortgages and wonky foundations.  Many tips on subverting and bribing building inspectors, code officers and others bent on enforcing housing laws.  Host has annoying cackle and cubic miles of amour propre, always on display.  Sponsored by manufacturers of sub-standard housing fixtures, green lumber and cut-rate tools made in some small bit of Indonesia.  Winner of many awards by public TV channels who use it to fill hours of programming at really odd times.  60 min.

  Inept attempt to match TV mongoose mania (see above) with disgusting blue-assed apes from Upper Volta who sh*t, copulate and pick their noses on camera, while wreaking havoc on the countryside and other fauna by attacking in Panzer-like pincer movements, calling in air cover and thoroughly fragging anyone in their way.  These big, ugly beasties are without redeeming animal value and should be nuked by the UN.  Only amusing moment:  baboon finds cameraman’s cell phone and calls Chicago collect.  45 min.

 Reel estate princess Sue Yussef leads contestants on a game show in which depressed properties are put up for sale by yuppy yokels to others of their ilk, and no one can either sell or buy anything, because the US economy has been hocked to China and Russia to underwrite the trillion $$$+ Bush-Cheney universal massacre and interrogation camp program.  All guests leave as homeless paupers.  65 min. 

  A survey of the few spots of nature left on this scarified hulk of a planet and how to preserve them for a year or two.  Naturalist-herbalist Weena Bumbay leads lengthy round-table discussions of topics best expressed in graphs and charts.  International guest list includes ornithopters, oenologists, numerologists and chiliasts, all vying for a few seconds’ air time, plus the usual load of disappointed office-seekers. 75 min.+

    With Bootsie N. Sandels, acclaimed bird fancier and sous chef.  Filmed episodes of animals and plants mating, propagating and masticating right in front of us in quasi-3D Snortacolor.  Beloved family show dating into remote antiquity before cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, Tasers, etc., so has a funky homemade look reminiscent of the Laurenzo Whelp Show and other TV archaeology. 30 min.

    Acclaimed highly personal view of national politix from ultra-right editor and Fascist propagandist Kate O’Enstitoot, with many a beggorah and bejabbers.  Title drawn from her recollections of growing up on Macamac (pron. McTavish) Island, with its no-car, horse-only bylaws and a giant cottage industry of making really dense and chocolaty fudge as the only dietary staple available on the island.  The mixed odor is stupendous.  O’Enstitoot’s ignorance often beggars belief.  45 min.