car-crash TV

British

noun

television programmes that show deliberately controversial, disturbing, or horrific material

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of car-crash TV

C20: from their eliciting in the viewer a similar horrified fascination to that experienced by people watching scenes of cars crashing

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Literal car-crash TV already exists in the form of Pick TV's Road Wars, although personally I prefer the bits between the crashes, where two laconic traffic cops pootle around Slough handing out fixed penalty notices to surly boyracers and telling them to "get those tinted windows sorted."

From The Guardian

At the same time, you watch it slightly willing people to fail, because car-crash TV appeals to us all at some level.

From The Guardian

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023