Steak, for instance, leaves me disappointed with most other things.
For example, if I have a deep , mystical religious experience shortly after eating steak, it just does not resonate on a long-term basis.
There are two possibilities.
One is that the enhanced process of digestion necessary for processing red meat within the body means there is less room for religious fervour.
The second is that steak is just so lovely anything else pales in comparison.
Today I had lamb for tea.
Roast lamb, with roast potatoes and roast onion and roast parsnip, and peas.
The peas were boiled.
Also there was both gravy and mint sauce, the latter made with fresh mint from the garden.
It was good.
That could be the reason the pilot episode of MacGyver, to which I was looking forward, was a terrible disappointment.
Other shows from the 1980s are worth watching.
I still enjoy watching Jeeps cartwheel on The A-Team.
And I have been looking forward to the repeat of the premiere season of MacGyver on The Box, starting next Saturday at 8.30pm.
MacGyver has a deep and complex cultural mana.
The show is referenced within an inch of its life in The Simpsons.
It turns up in any number of other shows from Myth Busters to Pulp Sport.
It was even used in a television commercial for Gregg's freestyle cooking range of herbs and spices.
And the first episode is directed by Alan Smithee - a pseudonym used by members of the Director's Guild of America when the director is so ashamed of a work for one reason or another he or she will not have their name associated with it.
The show is created by Lee David Zlotoff.
Henry Winkler and John Rich were the executive producers.
I only know one of those people - The Fonze - but really, with such ridiculous names, it should be fantastic.
The pilot, which begins this "encore" series, starts with MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) scaling a vertical wall to save an American pilot (of an aeroplane), and disable a missile.
He uses a Swiss and modifies a flare gun to make it a rocket thruster.
He uses a packet of cigarettes and the mirror from his binoculars to disable a laser beam.
You know MacGyver is a good guy, because he is in the Big Brother programme, mentoring an African American boy.
He has a mullet, for God's sake.
I know - it sounds great.
But it's not.
MacGyver is unbelievably, irredeemably awful.
And this is not the lamb talking.
Or the mint sauce.
- Charles Loughrey
