HOME.
Shake-up at the BBC.
Chris Patten, or Lord Patten of Barnes if you want to be formal, is one of those done-all-right-thank-you political figures (like Lord Coe, Lord Mandelson and many another Lord Elpus) whose charmed career proves it ain‘t what you know, it‘s who you know.
He has just been made Chairman of the BBC Trust.
It seems he doesn’t watch much TV but does have the right connections.
So now, to top up the £30,000 a year he is guesstimated to obtain as a paid advisor to BP (one assumes his advice was never sought as far away as the Gulf of Mexico) he has fallen into every OAP’s dream pension: £110.000 a year to sit his arse in at two or three meetings a week.
One can only assume the government is banking on him finding time between his advisories, honorary fellowships and position as Chancellor of Oxford University, to act as a Brit Joe McCarthy, rooting out all those involved in the notorious BBC left-wing conspiracy.
Expect heads to roll. Expect creepers to keep climbing. Expect no good to come of it. Political dabbling spells disaster.
(If in doubt see Police, Education and the NHS.)
And at ITV.
If George Orwell had written Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984 it might have contained the Political Correctness Police, for surely PC is the present day version of his Thought Police.
Latest to fall foul of this insidious cult is the Midsomer Murders producer Brian True-May. He dared exercise his right to free speech with the revelation that ethnic minorities do not appear in his Midsomer villages because he is trying to present something that appeals to a certain audience, it seems to have succeeded (for 15 years) and he doesn’t want to change it.
Now he is in hot water.
For what? Telling the truth?
Shades of Gerald Ratner, are we still punishing people for that?
I don’t think there was any racist intent on the man’s mind. I’ve watched his programme since its inception and have honestly never noticed an absence of ethnic minorities. Why would I? The nineteen thirties England where I was brought up had no such thing. Proves his point really, doesn’t it?
Racism is ignorant lunacy and should be firmly discouraged, but political correctness is not the answer and only a tabloid mind would imagine it is.
People from abroad do play a crucial role in this country today, but surely they don’t have to appear in every act to prove the point.
After all, it isn’t as if every episode of Midsomer ended with a song by the Black and White Minstrels. Now that really would be something for the PC brigade..
If the law has been broken, act on it. If it hasn’t, drop it!
And re-instate Mr. True-May.
ABROAD.
Living here's not so bad.
Earthquake in New Zealand. Tsunami killing thousands and causing nuclear power leakages in Japan, trouble throughout the Middle East, civil war in Libya leading to air strike intervention.
Not so bad living here after all, is it?
Think I'll stay.
TELEVISION.
Mad Dogs. (Sky1)
It was a cast to die for; or at least to take out an extra mortgage for.
Max Beesley, Ben Chaplin, Philip Glenister, John Simm and Marc Warren, all in the same show. I’d have been very happy with 10% of their combined wages bill.
What? I wouldn’t buy a house in Majorca, I’d buy Majorca.
Ben Chaplin apart (anybody as unpleasant as Alvo, the character he played, had to be erased early on) the remaining protagonists were present throughout the entire four part series. It must have cost their paymasters a fortune. Needless to say they were worth every penny.
Strange ending, though. Very, very strange ending.
Marchlands. (ITV1)
The story behind little Alice’s sad death was revealed in the fourth and final episode. This was a welcome relief to the remainder of the cast, particularly those who had lived in the haunted house and especially to the woman who, right until the last moment, dogmatically refused to believe in ghosts.
Never mind spoilers, Alice turned out to be a nice little girl and everyone but the surviving members of her family lived happily ever after.
Outcasts. (BBC1)
Short titles, sci-fi and futuristic drama being all the vogue, Outcasts had a familiar feel to it.
What we had here was The Survivors evacuated from an uninhabitable or disappearing world (your guess is as good as mine) to a far from friendly planet five years’ space ride away.
In the real world a drop in viewing figures resulted in the programme being rescheduled from prime time on Mondays and Tuesdays to late night on Sundays. I missed an episode or two. Didn’t realise. Thought it was just bad continuity. By the time I cottoned on it was too late. Then the news leaked through. There will not be another series; not even to sort out the bevy of loose ends. So I shall forever wonder why, in a culture which could produce a shield powerful enough to protect the entire planet, people were living in a shanty town.
Ah well, ne’er mind.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. (BBC2)
The format has been tried in various ways but this series puts two dealers in competition, using their own money, to find which of them can make the most money buying and selling antiques over the course of a week, profits to go to the individual‘s chosen charity.
I have no objection to the dealers (though many of the people with whom they do business will surely not welcome them so kindly after the programme has been aired): but I do object to the idiot voice-over and the ludicrous use of nicknames to describe them. The Fox? Knocker? The Hit Man? Makes them sound like a bunch of all-in wrestlers. I thought only snooker introductions had become that silly.
On the subject of idiot voice-overs, though…
Come Dine with Me. (C4)
I still avoid this puerile time-waster. My Leader watches it: she‘s the people person here. I not only lack patience with the backstabbing participants, I invariably finish up wanting to butcher and cook the mouthy twat who does the background commentary.
Slow roast on a spit, perhaps?
The Killing. (BBC4)
This dark Danish mystery is literally that: dark.
It’s the old CSI syndrome. Nobody seems to know how to switch a light on so they all shine torches everywhere. We have now reached episode 19 of the 20 part series and have had maybe half a dozen glimpses of Copenhagen in daylight throughout the lot.
Detective Inspector Sarah Lund has been in the dark so long she has become a life-risking fatalist: in pitch black conditions she ventures to obvious danger spots, leaves her gun in the car, advertises her location to any possible assailant by loudly enquiring whether anybody is there, waves her torch to no useful effect and constantly becomes separated from the colleague with whom she was initially instructed to collaborate. She was supposed to be transferring to Sweden. Believe it when it happens.
Don’t care about the dark. Don’t care about the subtitles.
Love it.
Silk. (BBC1)
Oh gawd, I thought, another bloody barrister thing. Good actors (Maxine Peake, Rupert Penry-Jones, Neil Stuke), but another bloody barrister thing?
I shouldn’t have prejudged.
Even more soap opera than the real thing, but very watchable.
Rather like it.
NCIS. (FX)
Despite its increasing resemblance to 1940s b/w English propaganda films (think Leslie Banks in Went the Day Well and Cottage to Let), we are still watching this delightful War On Terror twaddle. We were hooked long ago. If nothing else holds us, the chemistry between Gibbs and Abby never fails.
In recent series the scare-mongering Us versus Them storylines have been lightened by sideline stories, the latest of which featured Bob Newhart as Dr. Walter Magnus, former Chief Medical Officer of the department and an Alzheimer’s sufferer. His scenes with ‘Ducky’ Mallard (David McCallum) were excellent.
Mrs. Brown’s Boys. (BBC1)
Written by and starring Brendan O’Carroll and recorded in front of a live audience. They feckin’ laughed. We feckiin’ laughed. The PC are doubtless havin’ feckin’ apoplexy and the critics feckin’ hated it.
Has to be a huge feckin’ success.
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