Television
Animal magic
James Delingpole
Since writing that depressing column about how deeply miserable I was I have had so much sympathy that I almost feel happy again. Also I have been watching a lot more TV, which must be a good sign.
I'll start with Predators (BBC 1, Thurs- day) because I hardly ever write about ani- mal documentary series because they're usually so achingly predictable. Most of them divide roughly into two categories: Seen It All Before (migrating wildebeest, aren't baby polar bears tiny? etc.) and Ter- rors Of The Animal Kingdom! (gut-churn- ing close-ups, jazzy special effects, thumping soundtrack and tabloid voice- over desperate to convince you that you haven't Seen It All Before).
On first glance, Predators seemed worry- ingly to combine the worst of both genres: hackneyed sequences like 'cheetah kills gazelle' and 'great white shark chomps seal' spiced with groovy club music, computer- generated imagery and an hysterical John Hannah talking it all up with comments on the lines of 'This terrifying and incredibly interesting animal is deadlier than a squadron of Tornadoes armed with sidewinder missiles, napalm and ten mega- ton neutron bombs. Yet it's the size of a very small pea.'
But behind all this ratings-grabbing superficiality lurks a series of rare quality and integrity. Not only is the documentary footage as dramatic as any I've ever seen but — and here it differs from tosh like Walking With Dinosaurs — the accompany- ing special effects have a valid educational purpose.
When, for example, it shows you a bird's- eye view from a hunting eagle, it doesn't just make you go, Whooh. This is like trip- ping on acid, man!' It actually conveys, as never before, the truly stupendous rapidity of an eagle's brain processes as it locks onto a heather-camouflaged hare, dives down and kills it in the space of seconds. Predators may not be the first series to try to make you wonder anew at the ingenuity of nature, but it's certainly one of the very few from the last decade that succeeds.
Coupling (BBC 2, Friday) — there's another series I suppose I ought to review, largely because it's being talked of both as a worthy successor to This Life and as a UK version of Friends. To judge by the first episode, though, it's neither. Set in a glib, unconvincing sitcom world of half-baked smart-arsery, it completely lacks the sleazy authenticity of the former. And about the only thing it has in common with the latter is that the characters are all intensely irri- tating.
Perhaps it will get better, as these things usually do. But the desperation with which it attempted to wring every last drop of humour out of its not-as-funny-as-they- think-they-are jokes — e.g. referring to a girlfriend you can't get rid of as `unflush- able' — didn't inspire much optimism. Besides, I think it's a huge mistake for British comedy to emulate the wisecracking banter of Americans. Weirdness and irony are our strengths, not one-liners.
I feel slightly uncomfortable discussing Peter Taylor's new series Brits (BBC 2, Wednesday), about the British role during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, for fear that I expose myself as the rabid fascist my wife appears increasingly to believe I am. But tell me, dear right-thinking readers, is it my imagination or is Taylor being much harder on the Brits than he was when deal- ing with the IRA in his earlier series Provos?
While Taylor's historical overview seemed reasonably detached and well-bal- anced, his interviews with veterans did not. They gave the unfortunate impression that he was striving to suggest a moral equiva- lence between British security forces and IRA terrorists. Indeed, Taylor seemed more outraged by the British interrogation practice of placing bags over suspects' heads and playing 'white noise' in their ear than he was by the IRA version: first tor- ture your victims, then shoot them.
More annoying still was the bit where Taylor asked an undercover operative from 14 Intelligence about the practice of break- ing into suspects' houses. Taylor seemed to find this deeply shocking; so much so that he asked his interviewee to repeat this hor- rifying admission. Well, I'm sorry, Peter, but I think you may have misjudged your audience there. I doubt there were many of us sitting at home thinking, 'Good God! You mean those perfidious Brits actually had the gall to enter the homes of honest, law-abiding IRA terrorists without asking their permission first?' • But perhaps I'm being unfair. Certainly, if Taylor was really that biased, I doubt he would have included the final interview with its damning verdict on the Blair/Man- delson appeasement policy. In it a British intelligence officer recalled what a cap- tured IRA man had told him in the Seven- ties: 'I remember his words exactly. He said, "You're going to lose this war because one day you're going to get a government which is soft enough to give us what we want."' And it's come true, hasn't it?
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