Television
Missing the point
Simon Hoggart
Here are three programmes which almost work, but don't quite. The Trench (BBC 2) was one of those ideas which must have looked great on paper. The Beeb would send 24 volunteers from Hull to live in the conditions experienced by members of the 10th Battalion of the East Yorkshire regiment in the trenches 85 years ago. They would face long forced marches, eat dreadful food, catch ghastly diseases, sleep in mud, and generally undergo the horrors their forebears suffered. Except, of course, being shot at. Thus it was a bit like recreating the maiden voyage of the Titanic on dry land; it rather missed the point. Or, if you like, it was as realistic as a Sealed Knot enactment of a Civil War battle — pleasantly gruelling rather than hideously terrifying.
The makers were adamant that this wasn't going to be a first world war version of Big Brother, yet it might be more interesting if it were. In the first episode, the highlight came when 'Private' Nolan was sent back to Hull, amid what appeared to be genuine outrage, for malingering behind the lines. This, I suppose, was the equivalent of being shot for desertion, an idea which would also have pepped up the show no end.
All About Me (BBC 1) is the one thing a sitcom can't afford to be — worthy. Gosh it tries hard. Jasper Carrott, whom I like a lot, stars with Meera Syal, whom I also like a lot. (We once had her on The News Quiz on Radio Four. She was excellent. Now we call, mention the fee, and her agent laughs at us.) They are a mixed-race couple in Birmingham, raising their children by earlier marriages. One of these is a disabled wheelchair-user whose character has caused offence to disabled wheelchair users, or at least to their spokespersons, which is not always the same thing, because he doesn't say anything except to voiceover dry ironic asides about his extended family, as if disabled wheelchair-users were completely incapable of doing anything useful but might possess eldritch secret powers of insight. It's all rather odd.
For one thing Carrott and Syal aren't a mixed-race couple at all. They have the same ethnic origin in Sitkhomland, a country where people communicate entirely through wry jokes, wild exaggeration and snappy if unamusing one-liners. (`Does he like football?'Nah, he supports Manchester United.') The big problems they face are not social acceptance or the merging of two cultures in one household, but wacky Sitkhom situations, such as Carrott's son wanting to confess to his father, a builder, that he wants to become an architect, but of course Dad thinks he wants to say that he's gay . .
The show (unlike Frasier or Friends, it's written by a single person, Steven Knight) swerves wildly from tremendous sentimentality to Sitkhomland coarseness (*When did you first fancy me?' 'You came to fix my boiler, and you had all those tools dangling') which would be fine if it was funny. Oh, and lines such as: 'Take this and shove it into the same hole you talk out of aren't allowed. Verboten. Even in Sitkhomland you can be jailed for dialogue like that (though it turns out your cellmate is a loveable eccentric who has a crazy scheme for fooling the warders, which might just work).
Watching All About Me makes you feel that too much is happening at once. I got the same sensation from Strange (BBC 1), which was a pilot for a possible drama series about the supernatural. The makers seemed desperate that there might not be enough spooky events, so they hurled in everything they could think of: an ancient leather-bound book in mediaeval French entitled Demonica Diabolo, straight out of M.R. James, a cute little child who turns out to be the son of Beelzebub (yes, most of us have seen The Omen), a spitting black cat, an old man spelling out satanic words with a Scrabble set, which put me in mind of Rosemary's Baby, a film whose director knew that real terror comes from the unexpected and inexplicable appearing in the midst of ordinary life, not in a dark cathedral close stalked by Ian Richardson in a black cloak, looking like the woman in the Scottish Widows ad, or possibly the Camp Reaper. I suppose the idea of The Bike Messenger From Hell was original, though they do seem rather sinister already, which is why they're made to take their helmets off in public buildings. Anyhow, it was all too much. I doubt it will make a series, but if it does, less horror, more realism, please. Samantha Janus is allowed to stay.
One programme which worked triumphantly was Napoleon's Waterloo (Channel 4). It was gripping from start to finish. The recreation of the battle was a model for this kind of thing, though inevitably all historical programmes set before the first world war have to cope with the lack of
library footage. They got round this with flashing words and phrases up in huge letters, which seemed a bit pointless, but at least filled the screen. Otherwise, first-rate.
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