Television
Cover your ears
Simon Hoggart
Walking With Monsters (BBC1, Thursday) is an astounding produc tion, making Walking With Dinosaurs look as homely as Animal Hospital. Gosh, there were some horrible beasts around 530 million years ago, and they have all been lovingly recreated so that they look as real as the cat on your sofa, if more predatory. You do wonder just how accurate the beasts are; I know that scientists these days reckon they can reconstruct a fish the size of a bus from a couple of fossilised scales, but even so liberties must have been taken.
In a sense it doesn’t matter, and the way the show was presented seemed to acknowledge that. The commentary, read by Kenneth Branagh in a doom-laden voice, would have been apt for a 1950s horror film: ‘Strange and savage creatures fight a ruthless battle to rule the earth!’ he intoned. (No, they didn’t, they were trying to get fed. Ruling the earth was the last thing on their minds.) ‘This is life’s forgotten story, an epic war for our world — a war between monsters!’ The whole was accompanied by strident, look-behind-you music, which usually comes at the point where the escaping prisoners have found motorbikes and are racing to keep ahead of the pursuing Nazis.
‘Their arthropod enemies have also been evolving, and are now ready for — Round Two!’ says Branagh. I take the point, but this was really anthropomorphism only one step more grown up than Finding Nemo. It’s the hectoring tone you hear on Sky Sports 27, when they’re trying to persuade you that Torquay v. Wrexham is worth watching. I longed for the soft, reassuring voice of David Attenborough, who at least realises that his creatures are animals and not rejects from the World Wrestling Federation. Or even Rolf Harris: ‘Now this chap has jaws the size of a pick-up truck. Hello, little fella!’ I thought the images were wonderful, but the soundtrack put me in mind of the Japanese film Godzilla vs King Kong; you enjoyed the fight without caring too much who won. It did produce some powerful images. The sight of a hynerpeton, who apparently resembled a cuddly toy crocodile, thinking it had made it to the safety of dry land, only to find that a gigantic fish could flipper itself on to the beach and grab it from behind, reminded me irresistibly of politics, or more precisely Michael Cockerell’s new film, How To Be Tory Leader (BBC2, Saturday). Many politicians, including Anthony Eden, John Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, must have felt much like the hynerpeton, savaged from behind by the likes of Norman Tebbit and Michael Portillo (Mark I Portillo, that is, not the caring New Man we see today.) As always with Cockerell’s films, the ostensible theme is really an excuse to offer us exciting shiny moments, like Christmas tree baubles: Quintin Hogg’s vulgarity in the 1960s matching David Davis’s ‘It’s DD for me!’ T-shirts, worn by heavy-breasted young women at the Tory conference this year; Alec Douglas-Home, whose mouth opened and shut exactly like a ventriloquist’s dummy; Margaret Thatcher choosing, as the record that meant most to her, ‘Two Little Boys’ (Rolf Harris again — is there no corner of our national life he has not infiltrated?); Chris Patten describing Mrs Thatcher as ‘the anaconda in the chandelier’ (though, if he had seen WWM, he could have called her ‘the lystrosaurus in the swimming-pool’); John Major’s tiny silence when Mrs T. phoned asking him to second her nomination in 1990, interpreted in opposite ways by both of them; and Ted Heath’s deadpan expression when asked if, on hearing of her resignation, he had called his office and said ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’ — ‘No, I said it three times.’ And of course her own set, white face when she described the way the Cabinet pushed her out: ‘I shall never forget, and I shall never forgive!’ We’ve seen that before, many times, but it’s always worth enjoying again.
If you do live in Downing Street, it’s not much fun, according to Married To The Prime Minister (Channel 4, Monday). This was presented by Cherie Booth, and no doubt its subtext was to present her as an amiable, unassuming sort of person, which by and large it did. The saddest moment came when Mary Wilson, still with us and possessed of all her marbles, said that sometimes the pressure was so unbearable that she fled by the back gate and went to a friend’s house where she could eat smoked-salmon sandwiches, drink champagne and sleep. The friend lived in Finchley. No, surely not her!
The programme included one very brief glimpse of Carol Thatcher, standing quietly by her father’s side. Ms Thatcher has now, thanks to I’m A Celebrity — Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV), become a huge star, or at least a celebrity — not necessarily the same thing. I am delighted. From our very slight acquaintance I know her to be charming, friendly, plucky and enthusias tic. The term ‘good egg’ might have been coined for her. How fortunate we are to have her in every celebrity magazine instead of her evil twin.
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