Norway's NRK reality TV reaches a new slow with shows up to 18 hours long

REAL life too busy? Try eight hours watching a crackling fire or 18 hours seeing salmon spawn - this is the new reality TV and millions are entranced.

SLOW TV is causing a revolution in Norway. Can it catch on in Australia?

Reality TV Norweigan-style is a seven-hour train trip, a five-day cruise ship, eighteen continuous hours watching salmon spawn and eight hours of a crackling fire. There is no editing, there is no action. If nothing happens, nothing happens.

Reality TV Norwegian-style ... Seven hours watching a train.

The concept has been named Slow TV and it began in 2009 when Norway's national broadcaster NRK decided to air live coverage of a seven-hour train ride from Olso to Bergen. There was no storyline, no editing, no drama and yet it was a ratings smash.

In a country of about 5 million, more than a million tuned in.

Reality TV Norwegian-style ... A five day screening of a boat trip to Norway's fjords was watched by half the population.

Bergensbanen: Minutt for Minutt was followed up in 2011 by Hurtigruten, a 134-hour sea cruise around the country's fjords with 11 on-board cameras.

Two and a half million people - half of Norway's population - watched the ship pull into port, breaking records and ushering in the era of slow TV.

WOULD SLOW TV WORK IN AUSTRALIA? TELL US BELOW

In February, NRK broadcast National Firewood Night, with 12 hours of a fireplace flickering along with firewood-related discussion. It was a roaring success.

Recently an 18-hour special on salmon swimming upstream was televised (audiences complained that it was too short, The Chicago Maroon reported).

The next row of programs includes a National Knitting Night on November 1, in which viewers will tune in to watch the minute-by-minute knitting of a sweater after seeing a sheep sheared, its wool being spun and then knitted. This all happens in real time. No editing. No-one knows how long it will last.

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"A Day in the Life of a Snail" is being developed.

As a genre, Slow TV seems limitless, with all manner of time-consuming or mundane activities yet to explore.

Oystein David Johansen, a critic at one of Norway's biggest newspapers, has compared the morbid fascination the shows create with that of watching Formula 1 car racing.

"People are watching just in case something happens," he told Time.

Only in the case of Slow TV, nothing ever does.

Why would this not work in Australia? The ideas are endless. A day at a country picnic race meeting, a three-day trip on The Ghan, fishing for the South Australian Cobbler, seeing Southern Bluefin Tuna spawn, watching the tide come in at Bondi Beach and mowing of the pitch at the MCG before a Test match.

GIVE US YOUR IDEAS BELOW