Television
My advice: escape
Marcus Berkmann
The teasing little trailers have started. The Fawlty Towers repeats are coming to an end. The sun may be out, the nights may not be noticeably drawing in, but the main television channels are already gearing up for their 'new season' of programmes, when they finally unveil the goodies they have so carefully been saving up for us all year. On BBC 1, bouffant controller Peter Salmon is promising more new drama and more new comedy, which won't be hard to deliver, as there's bugger all of either on at the moment. His last great wave of com- missions, the endless lifestyle and soft fac- tual programmes, are still clogging up the schedules like fat down a restaurant's drainpipe. Weekday evenings are so dull at the moment they should be sponsored by travel companies. Fly away! Go abroad! Escape all this rubbish!
Vets In Practice (BBC1) began its 734th series this week with Trude cuddling an adorable saucer-eyed dog, Maria tending some baby hedgehogs and Joe pulling on a vast pair of yellow rubber gloves. Nothing in television deceives so absolutely as a credit sequence, however, for by the end of the programme both Trude and Maria had sliced up small furry animals on the operat- ing table, while Joe had only cleaned the cooker. It's hard to overstate the crippling blandness of this series, although if the sen- tence `Trude's next patient is a prize-win- ning guinea pig' sets your heart racing, it may be the show for you. The vets young, good-looking, fearsomely dull treat sick animals, some of which 'pull through', others of which don't. Comfort- ing middle-of-the-road music plays in the background. This week the guinea pig sur- vived the night, to general relief, while a gloomy old dog was given two months to live. We last saw the elderly mutt licking his owner's beard on a scenic rural hillside, where they had been placed by the camera crew for this purpose.
Barking Mad (BBC 1) is altogether chirpi- er, as you can tell by the primary-coloured graphics and a criminally chirpy theme tune. Philippa Forrester and a vet called Mark are called in to solve all manner of photogenic pet problems, from the Siamese cats who trash their owners' flat to Skippy the frightened horse (cue more soft music). The Vet Called Mark decides that the cats need a 'lifestyle makeover', the sort of phrase that comes to mind only after years working in daytime TV. Meanwhile a mad doberman on a canal barge has been referred to an American behaviourist, who attempts to train him to walk along a tow- path without mauling passers-by. Each of these stories is presented in a series of bite- sized chunks — 'to see what happens, join us later' — as though this were a commer- cial channel, and there were ads for Whiskas Supermeat to accommodate. Here, though, it just highlights a terrible lack of confidence in the material. Please keep watching. We know it's dull, but please don't turn over just yet. It'll get bet- ter, we promise.
In The Toughest Job In Britain (BBC 1), a vaguely familiar man with a beard spends some time with people who might or might not be doing the toughest job in Britain. This week it was WPC Wendy Pearson of the Police Homeless Unit, followed by John Carter, travelling showman. Wendy and her colleagues were wonderfully kind to their homeless clients — 'Can you try and sit up, because we want to make sure you're all right?' — and very generously offered to take them back to the cells for a little lie-down. John Carter moaned inces- santly about the hardship, misery and tor- ment of his job running a small travelling fair, before admitting there was nothing he'd rather do. In fact this was much the most entertaining show of the three, and the vaguely familiar man linked it all very capably, although it would been more at home as an item on Nationwide.
Which is the problem, in a nutshell. Whatever Bob Wellings may be doing these days, his legacy is there for all to see. BBC 1 has become the Nationwide channel, dominated by these slightly stretched lifestyle and makeover shows that cost far less than all that drama and comedy we used to have. That's the real issue here: money. Peter Salmon can save up all his I've been simply run off my feet today.' best drama and comedy for the autumn, but only by showing Watchdog Healthcheck the other 40 weeks of the year. Cheap these programmes may be, but they are a heavy price to pay.
Simon Hoggart is away.
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