Television
Inedible drama
Peter Levi
For months at a time the only way I ever saw big trees used to be by going to London, and wild countryside by going to cowboy films, but now that appears on television several times a week. Program- mes like Dartmoor — the Threatened Wilderness (Channel 4) and the Basque shepherds on Disappearing World (ITV) take a sad look at places one would like to be in, and people one would like to know. They are absolutely and immediately credi- ble, and one can ignore the conventional green-bearded groans that enter into the structure of these films as pursuit and battle do into the cowboy films. Like most likely viewers, I needed the subtitles for Basque conversations, but they were too stiff: a language like that deserves a supple translation, and wooden subtitles make every conflict and relationship cruder. The streaming flocks of sheep were often rob- bed of their natural noises, the shepherds had voices but not their true range of expression.
All the same, that was a brilliant film, and it stayed in the mind for a week. I only wish it were a series, like the films about the Masai a few years ago, in which one got so used to the rhythm of their voices that one had the illusion of understanding them. In fact, certain humming noises and narrative styles in our family really were picked up from the Masai films, and a bit of Basque would be an injection of fresh blood. Why is it that films about wild places should be so much more successful than films about gardens? It is not just that real shepherds are nicer than television garden gnomes. It must be something to do with artifice: a garden is an artificial paradise, a carefully nourished stage-set to be seen from special points of view, or in a certain sequence, scene flowing into scene, but the eye of the camera almost always gets this wrong, while in untamed country- side there is no artifice to misinterpret.
But take cooking, for example. Why should cooking programmes be so often more enjoyable than garden films? You get to see the flowers, but you never get to eat the cooking, so the garden ought to have an advantage. I can only suppose that cooking has more drama. In at the Deep End (BBC 1) had plenty of that, because Paul Heiney with his usual charming anxie- ty had to master the skills of a great chef in double-quick time, in order to represent the Roux brothers in a cooking competi- tion, in which he came second. It is not so much the thrill of the result as the possibil- ity of disaster that makes cooking drama- tic. Perfectly competent cooks get bored. Richard Shepherd of Langan's Brasserie was witty and withering, Keith Floyd showed more artistic temperament. Both Nico Landenis and Raymond Blanc appeared jollier than they are said to be when their own reputations are at stake. It was a relief to observe in Michel Roux what appeared to be a really happy man, like Postman Pat (ITV), and a television natural good enough to have gone into politics. Thank heavens he chose the more attractive art of cooking.
The Secret File on Citizen K (BBC 2) was an appalling insight into the harm that political prejudice can do, at least when that is combined with secret information and the grotesque incompetence of the American secret police. Mr Penn Kimball is only a minor victim, and clearing his own name has been a successful journalistic coup, but the case he makes ramifies very widely. Now that the election is over, television has gone back to normal, but this was better than average. So, I suppose, was Spitting Image Election Special (ITV), which gave vigorous expression to wholly negative views which probably most people share. I found it stunningly unfunny, and much more depressing than the real thing, because it added an acid and universal mockery and a huge dollop of bad taste. I am sure it should not be banned, but I do not think it should take place. Its only redeeming feature was its occasional truth to life, but on this occasion that only added to its power to depress.
Is it just rubberised plastic that makes it so awful? Or extreme ugliness? It would certainly attack anything we treasured, and yet I have not seen it attack a tennis star, a football star, a pop star, or any ordinary scum of the earth. It is based on envy and hatred of those sitting ducks the Royal Family, and of the heads of political parties. Much as I hate many of the targets, I think this programme is intolerable, particularly on election night, particularly because one longs for humour and is offered strychnine and ashes.
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