A lot to learn
James Delingpole
Iwas reading an interview with hippy multi-millionaire Felix Dennis the other day in which he claimed that watching television is a massive waste of life. 'My God,' I thought. 'So that's why I'm not a multi-millionaire.' And I quietly promised myself that in future I'd only watch things that were improving and worthwhile.
The problem is that rules out 99.99 per cent of the stuff that's on TV, which isn't much help if you're a TV critic. In fact it isn't much help if you're a crappy, lowbrow, pop-culture journalist generally. To a normal healthy person with a real job, a programme like Martin Bashir's Michael Jackson interview or that Carole Caplin documentary or Wife Swap is just so much vacuous, pointless light relief for slobbing in front of when you've got nothing better to do. For me. potentially, it's a quick turnaround, think-piece worth upwards of 500 quid. So you see my dilemma.
Still, there are moments when my job doesn't suck and having to watch The Great War (BBC2) is one of them. Because it was made nearly 40 years ago, I had assumed it wouldn't have much to say to a generation weaned on Ecstasy, zappy visuals, pacy cutting and schlocky, nu-school war does with titles like Fiends of The Eastern Front: Was Stalin Almost Defeated By Hitler's Elite Unit of Transylvanian Vampires? But, of course, this is exactly what makes it so distinctive and refreshing. Like the sort of history teacher they don't make any more, its approach is slow and methodical and quite unafraid to risk boring its audience if tedium is what it takes to get the point across.
I do so hate revealing the depths of my ignorance in print but, among the things I didn't know before I watched the programme, was that by 1914 Germany's (not ours) was the world's second largest economy after America's; and that France was an industrial backwater given over mainly to agriculture. Nor did I properly appreciate that, until Bismarck united them, Germany's states were ruled by princelings and had different specialities (music, art, whatever); and that the reason they agreed to be led by the kaisers Prussia was that Prussians were good at war and they were spoiling for a fight. I'm going to be learning a lot in the next 25 weeks, I can see.
What you should also have a look at if you've got cable is Curb Your Enthusiasm (BBC4), which is like the new Larry Sanders Show. It's filmed (with a slightly annoying wobbly camera) in the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the life of Larry David (who co-wrote Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld) and, like Sanders, it's selfreferential and deadpan and swarming with famous Hollywood types playing themselves.
It opened with Larry staring at the preternaturally large ruck which appeared in the crotch of his new cords whenever he sat down, worrying aloud to his wife whether people might mistake the bulge for an erection. Sure enough Larry's worst fears came true at the cinema when his wife's best friend was stroking his arm (in a friendly platonic way) only to look down and get the wrong end of the stick.
Larry's wife ends up trying to explain to the friend what really happened, only to have the friend insist, 'No, it was an erection. He had it because I was stroking his arm.' 'You never told me she was stroking your arm.' says the wife. 'I didn't tell you because it wasn't relevant,' says the hapless Larry, who is then forced to insult the
friend by telling her that she just isn't the sort of woman to give him an erection. And so it goes on. I don't know about yours, but this is almost exactly what my life is like.
Before it ends, I must say nice things about The Book Group (Channel 4), which is one of the strangest, most beguiling and original comedy series on TV. Well. I say comedy, though it's more surreal than funny. But it is very clever and different, the way, for example, it deploys its gay and disabled characters in a relaxed, natural and completely un-PC manner, or the way it manages to slip quite explicit sex into almost every episode while yet retaining an air of demure innocence. Writer/director Annie Griffin really does deserve lots of prizes and new commissions; and I do hope we'll be seeing lots more of its talented, multi-national cast.
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