One face after another leaves it, and instead of giving priority to truly public issues, it mostly promotes controversial detective series, reality shows taken from abroad and new and new magazines, brazenly riddled with hidden advertising and product placement. Because of this, he also faces a number of complaints, but he obviously does nothing about them, as well as from other criticism. Quite rightly, media experts and owners of private TV stations are demanding that the rules of public service are finally clearly defined.
For example, it is beyond any doubt that the new documentary cycle with considerable commercial potential, Drunken Prague, which takes viewers to Prague’s pubs, bars and pubs, will significantly increase their attendance, as happens in similar cases.
Instead of launching an awareness campaign at a time when alcohol consumption is a very serious societal problem in our country, Czech Television cynically presents a series that blatantly adores drinking beer and Prague as the capital of Czech pubs. Moderator Jan Hájek admits that as a guide for this show, he wants to experience a different Prague, a hidden Prague, a drunken Prague.
In individual episodes, it presents more or less well-known pubs in Prague, while the viewers are usually offered the same image. Rooms full of regulars, sitting at tables, lined with pints of beer and even smoking. It is a great irony that they toast their health together, despite the fact that experts constantly point out that only moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial to health, which few people do in the environment of a typical Czech pub.
It is no coincidence that one of the regular guests honestly admits that the biggest problem is leaving the pub. Everyday beer drinkers ignore that this popular drink is also an addictive substance due to its alcohol content, and its excessive consumption is demonstrably harmful to health. Half a liter of beer per day is considered a safe maximum, half for women. In addition, the latest studies deny that moderate drinking of alcohol is beneficial to health and warn that there is no safe dose of the drug.
Not to mention the fact that drinking beer is often associated with the consumption of other alcoholic beverages and, last but not least, unhealthy food, mostly sausages, grilled and roasted meat, etc. Drunken Prague nevertheless praises this typically Czech phenomenon as Czech beer culture. And despite the fact that, with few exceptions, a single cultural element, singing, has disappeared from today’s pubs.
In addition, Jan Hájek presents Czech pubs as a refuge from the whole world, which each of us needs. Although this is nonsense, as many people have found other, more godly refuges, it is surprising that a public station is devoting a second series in a row to pubs in a short period of time. Before Drunken Prague, it was Příběhy české hospod, also openly promoting a number of establishments where the beer flows.
Source: Czech Television – Drunk Prague
