Time to wise up the BBC
Barry Millington writes an open letter to the new controller of BBC2
Dear Roly Keating
Allow me to join the chorus of congratulations as you get your feet under your new desk at Broadcasting House. Knowing of your track record at BBC4, I was delighted to hear that you had got the job and I'm sure you won't waste any time in getting to grips with the problems awaiting you.
I don't think there has ever been a period in my lifetime when British television — and by that I mean the BBC's terrestrial channels, ITV, Channel 5 — has been so unutterably dire: cheap, tacky, predictable and literally unwatchable. While somewhat alarmed by your statement on being appointed that your predecessor 'Jane Root is leaving [13BC2] in strong creative health', I presume this is merely a vacuous courtesy. 'Strong creative health!' Feeble and brain-dead would be a more accurate description of the channel at the moment.
But what concerns me most of all is the arts, and although I know you have no shortage of ideas on the subject, I hope you'll forgive me if I make one or two points. Is it my imagination or is the craze for dumbing down the arts not what it was? It's too soon to be sure, but there are some hopeful straws in the wind. For one thing, those baneful New Labour buzz words multiculturalism, accessibility and inclusivity, though still with us, don't seem to have quite the magic potency they once did. (Needless to say, I'm not against the arts being available to all: I simply want that access to be to the best available, not a watered-down version.) Then there was culture secretary Tessa Jowell's exhortation to remember that the arts were not just an instrument of social policy but a pursuit of value in itself: we should 'support culture on its own merits' and 'stop apologising for it by speaking only of it in terms of other agendas', she declared. I know the statement was mocked in some quarters as hypocritical, and I agree that coming from a New Labour apparatchik it is a bit rich. But maybe the message is getting across? Some of us have certainly been banging on about it for long enough.
And perhaps most tellingly of all, there seems to be a consensus among the viewing public that British television has sunk to a new nadir of awfulness. A document presented to your colleagues in BBC management at the end of last month showed that viewers' appreciation of BBC1 sunk to 'an all-time low' in April, while BBC2's audience share fell below 10 per cent in May for the first time. I gather that BBC managers were pretty stunned by the statistics. If they were, they need to get out a bit more and hear what people are saying.
So what are you going to do about it, Roly? May I suggest that it's time to wise up the BBC once again? I don't want to fall into the trap of fantasising about a golden age of television that never was. But there have been landmark series, documentaries and dramas of a quality that one rarely sees these days. Show me work comparable to that of Ken Loach, Dennis Potter or Alan Bleasdale today. And I think I'm not alone in my sense that people are crying out for high-calibre, memorable, life-enhancing programmes rather than a mere reflection of what they can see and hear if they go down to the pub instead.
If I say that it's time for the BBC to reassert the value of great art, you will doubtless respond with news of the upcoming season of opera, drama, visual art and the rest on BBC2. But will it be genuinely memorable and life-enhancing? And will it be presented by experts who can communicate their knowledge and enthusiasm and are not afraid to pronounce names and places correctly? I'm fed up with presenters chosen for their pub-friendly, matey style, who mangle any foreign names as though to say, 'It's OK, there's nothing to be afraid of: I'm just a common bloke, too.' The BBC used to pride itself on correct pronunciation, and it's important for young people — for all of us — to hear foreign words correctly enunciated. There's no need to drag art down to the level of pub banter. Art is not mundane: it's special, celebratory, at its best transcendental and sublime. Let's stop apologising for it.
And while I'm at it, please will you tell those announcers to stop ruining the end of films with their idiot trails? The way to stop channel-hopping is to offer unmissable programmes, not to break the spell of elevated emotion prematurely.
If it's true, as has been intimated by some of your colleagues, that the BBC is about to embark on some sort of cultural regeneration, can I beg you to ensure that the arts are covered with the depth and seriousness they deserve? How about a major, 15-part history of music, for example, from its origins to the present day? And I know this is asking a lot, because it is classical music and therefore has to be trivialised, doesn't it? But how about giving the lightweight, blokeish Charles Hazlewood a rest and getting a real authority, a knowledgeable, charismatic academic, to write and front the series? The Simon Schama of the musical world. I can think of several candidates who would be ideal.
And isn't it time we had some real drama on BBC2? I don't just mean Shakespeare and Chekhov either (though that would be a start). I'm thinking of Ibsen, Shaw, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Mamet, Frayn. Why not offer people a chance to see some of the stunning West End productions around without having to pay outrageous booking fees? I think that would make you popular.
What about philosophy: the ideas of Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein? You think philosophy on television would be a turn-off? I beg to differ. Ideas are dynamite. Take Nietzsche: you've got the death of God, the Superman, the will to power, the notion of a cultural elite. Just think how this could all be brought to life on television.
I'd like to see architecture, poetry, novels and other art forms given their due too, perhaps in documentaries of the imaginative kind we used to have in music (I'm thinking of Ken Russell, Tony Palmer, Christopher Nupen).
You are quoted as saying that BBC2 is 'the channel of record for culture'. Well, it may have been once and we're all looking to you to make it so again. Good luck, and remember what Nietzsche said: 'Live dangerously!'
Yours ever Bany Millington
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