Television
Hell is other people
Simon Hoggart
This week Big Brother (Channel 4) reaches its climax. In the same way, I sup- pose you could argue that the moment when the paint actually dries is a sort of cli- max too. There certainly hasn't been much excitement watching it happen. The belief that the nation has been gripped by the fate of these 11 terminally dull people seems to me erroneous. The latest viewing figures show that a little under 7 million people watched on a typical Friday evening, when the victim of the week was thrown out to meet his or her 15 weeks of fame (sadly, in these days of 24-hour cable channels, 15 minutes is no longer enough). These viewing figures were enough to make the Friday programme only the 20th most popular of the week, comfortably behind Vets In Practice. The show's average over the whole seven days has been 4.8 mil- lion, so only around 9 per cent of the popu- lation has been watching it.
Mind you, for Channel 4, those figures are sensational. For some reason most peo- ple seem pathologically incapable of push- ing the button for either Channel 4 or BBC 2, like teetotallers unable to walk into a pub. BB might have slightly dislodged that habit. And, at a guess, the demographics, including lots and lots of AB1s and young people, are even better, so they'll be mighti- ly pleased by that. But there's no need for us to flagellate ourselves as a nation for being dumbed down by this new style of television. Remember that most nights nine out of ten Britons had something better to do than watch a bunch of dreary show-offs moaning about their lives and learning to ride unicycles. I suspect that their tedium has been part of the show's attraction. We're not watching as voyeurs, because there's nothing of interest to view; instead we are mentally imagining what it would be like to be trapped with these folk and being intensely grateful that we're not. When Sartre said that 'hell is other people', he probably meant the Germans, 'les autres' being discreet French slang for the Boche during the occupation. But, alive today, he would have meant the cast of Big Brother.
The whole run of Big Brother should have been consigned to 100 Greatest TV Moments From Hel4 which Channel 4 showed over three hours on Saturday night. This came a few days after the poll designed to elicit the hundred best TV pro- grammes, and which was won by Fawlly Towers, with Cathy Come Home second. TV Hell was a useful reminder that television of the past wasn't all great comedy, heart- rending drama and ground-breaking docu- mentaries. There was also The Black & White Minstrel Show, Fanny and Johnnie Cradock's cookery programmes and Juke Box Jury, which, in its later days, had Noel Edmunds as its host. The sneering Johnny Rotten was a highlight on that show: as someone pointed out, 'he looked at Noel Edmunds the way that the whole nation would later look at Noel Edmunds'. My own favourite disaster was on Top Of The Pops when Dexy's Midnight Runners per- formed Van Morrison's overblown tribute to an American soul star, 'Jackie Wilson Said'. Someone got it wrong and used as a backcloth a giant photo of Jocky Wilson, the darts player. The lesson of both top hundreds was that the best television is always meticulously prepared and scripted, and the worst is generally when a clever clogs producer has said, 'Let's throw some- thing together and see what happens!'
Harry Enfield's Brand Spanking New Show is part of Sky l's attempt to turn itself into a mainstream channel instead of one which is stuffed with reruns of the worst American TV. It was good in parts but not quite good enough. His original BBC shows helped spawn The Fast Show which took the format and moved on. This moved backwards. Strange Bob the football Commentator was funny in a surrealist way, but the Cornish lover and the rude Dutch chemist were pretty stale ideas. The stuffy businessman on a plane objecting to being seated next to a rock star, Jay Kay of Jamiroqui, allowed to be totally reasonable and cool, was merely embarrassing.
Mo Mowlam had, as usual, little trouble coping with Paul Merton on Room 101 (BBC 1). For a woman who's supposed to be a bag full of nerves and emotions, she seemed amazingly cool. It's a pity it isn't so easy to get Peter Mandelson purring with pleasure.
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