Daily Inspiration Quote by Patrick Macnee

There is a particular actorly candor in Patrick Macnee’s shrugging autopsy of a TV series: a refusal to mythologize success after the fact. He doesn’t polish the origin story; he drags it through the indignity most shows would rather edit out. “Ordinary” and “really rather bad” aren’t just self-deprecation, they’re a way of reclaiming authorship from the PR machine. By admitting the early episodes weren’t good, Macnee makes the later glow feel earned rather than engineered.

The killer line is the review: “we think the commercials are better than the show.” It’s brutal, funny, and culturally precise. Television has always been haunted by the suspicion that the real artistry lives in the ad breaks, where budgets are higher, jokes land faster, and nothing has to sustain a character for 45 minutes. Macnee repeats that jab not to wallow, but to underscore how precarious TV-making is: the audience isn’t just watching, it’s comparing you to the slickest, most optimized content in the room.

“Gradually developed” is the quiet thesis. No epiphany, no genius arriving on a white horse - just iteration, accident, chemistry, and a little institutional patience that modern TV rarely allows. The subtext is almost rebellious now: that a show can be allowed to be bad in public long enough to become good, and that the people inside it can admit that without losing face.