Television
How did it happen?
Simon Hoggart As anyone who works for the BBC will tell you, the Corporation is now overrun with accountants, consultants, project directors, resource managers and systems controllers who know little about broad- casting and who would be almost as much at home in a merchant bank or a fish-gut- ting shed. When a friend of mine, a pro- ducer, was asked by one of these characters what were his 'target priorities', he replied, 'To make the best possible programmes.' This answer was brushed aside as obvious smart-aleckery. He was then asked to fill in a form each month stating, on a scale of one to ten, how close he had come to achieving his targets. Not all the Birt changes have been bad. It does no harm to get a grip on budgets, even if it sometimes costs more in paper work to make the economies than it would have done to spend the money in the first place. However, the new system does leave one mystery unexplained: how is it that, in spite of this brigade of bureaucrats, a programme as unspeakably awful as Sunnyside Farm (BBC 2) can get on to the air?
How did it happen? I can see the first proposal at a planning meeting. A situation comedy about a dysfunctional pair of brothers who live together on their farm (shades of Steptoe and Son). A well-to-do banker and his naive idealistic wife buy a country cottage nearby (memories of The Good Life). The fun begins and sparks fly when the older farmer falls for the beauti- ful wife!
On paper it probably sounded all right. So scripts were commissioned, actors cast and shooting schedules drawn up. Then the programmes were filmed, edited, fitted into the schedules, publicised and transmitted. And at no stage did any one of these highly paid people look at the results and say, `Stop! These may possibly be the worst pro- grammes ever made by the BBC! If you put these on air, they will do terrible, possibly permanent damage to the reputation of the world's greatest broadcasting organisation!' Not one. What the hell were they doing? What on earth are they paid for?
It's hard to decide what is most dreadful about Sunnyside Farm. The opening shot, in which one of the brothers is splattered with manure from a brown animal, a cow I suppose, was a grim start. So was the sec- ond, in which he comically tried to clean himself up with the dish-cloth. Even the laugh track strained at that one.
Perhaps it's the older brother's humor- ous swearing, as in 'You stupid banjo!' or `You stupid gherkin!' or 'Oh, chocolate arses!' Sometimes he curses with the names of popular songwriters, as in 'Godley and Creme!' or 'Burt Bloody Bacharach, it's my Christing cow!'
Presumably someone thought this would be an amusing motif to run through the show. But they couldn't keep up even this level of wit, and reverted to 'Are you deaf, you lumping great sack of shit!', 'Ken, you are a towering tit!', or, climactically, 'Balls! Balls! Balls! Balls!'
Enter the upper-class couple, who are lost. 'We seem to be directionally impaired,' the husband says, and at home you ponder, bemused, that several people sat round a table in a script conference last year — and passed that line.
The programme is predictably quite unpredictable, by which I mean that a joke is signalled so far in advance that you can- not believe they are actually going to use it. Yokel is leaning over wall. Policeman says, `We've had reports of some nutter exposing himself, so keep a look out for anything strange,' and, yes, as he goes off, there's a back shot revealing that the yokel is not wearing trousers.
On top of this, quite inexplicably, we have Michael Kitchen (what in the name of the Lord is he doing mired in this rubbish?) as the wicked landlord. The running joke is that he wants his money: 'One week max, or say goodbye to your kneecaps.' Ha! Ha!
The yuppie couple ask the hellish broth- ers round for dinner CI love your rustic sense of humour,' says the wife). The older brother misbehaves and slobbers all over her. The younger, even thicker, brother is unaccountably dressed in a floral frock and bright red lipstick. I've heard of the suspen- sion of disbelief; suspension of breathing is the only rational reaction to this pro- gramme.
It would be wearisome to continue. But sitcoms really need only two ingredients: good jokes and at least one character you either like or at least identify with. If you produce half an hour without a single decent gag and a collection of characters who rival each other only for stupidity and brutish nastiness, you are certain to end up with a disaster, though rarely one as great as Sunnyside Farm.
The 'star' is Phil Daniels, of whom I have never heard, though the show is billed mendaciously as 'a comedy starring Phil Daniels'. The writers are Richard Preddy and Gary Howe. I am sure we shall hear more of them, preferably in a news bulletin about a terrible train crash.
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