Antiques Roadshow

This is not about the Presidential race.

Now that I have an 18 month sentence of confinement to my room, I've begun a long-needed comparison of two TV programs: the American version of "Antiques Roadshow" vs. the British version of "Antiques Roadshow."

In the American version, a slick dealer will interview a housewife from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She will have brought in an etching she grabbed from a trash pile when a local hotel was knocked down to make way for a trailer park. The owner of the trailer park had told her she could keep it. The etching turns out to be a missing, one-of-a-kind art work by Rembrandt worth $120,000. 

In the British version, four sisters and a cousin bring in a damaged brick given to their great-grandfather by the Duke of Earl. It's the last-known remnant of a royal cottage lost in the great Soho fire of 1542. It's worth about 90 pounds but has enormous sentimental value. 

My conclusion is that ordinary Brits have little to bring to these events. All the good stuff is either owned by the Queen or can be found in one of the ten thousand museums in England and Wales. The participants are reduced to bringing in whatever they have left, perhaps a branch once gnawed on by Sir Walter Raleigh's chamber pot cleaner.