Television
Bad times
James Delingpole
Even though I don't get paid nearly as much as I deserve for this column, it does have its compensations. A couple of week- ends ago, for example, Tiffany and I were invited on this really cool freebie to the British Grand Prix. We hung out with the West McLaren Mercedes team and got flown there and back in an actual heli- copter. And all because a bloke called Neil Duckworth, who runs Tag Heuer watches, was supposedly a fan of my column. Hurrah!
Right, on to television. Or rather, not on to television quite yet because I'd just like to have a quick whinge about what a terri- bly horrible time I'm generally having at the moment. The main reason for this is that I can't find a decent-sized house to buy and may be forced to do something really awful like move south of the river. Also, I've been given a week to finish my shark novel and it isn't enough. And I've got so much journalism to do before I go on holiday that I've been having sleepless nights and everything I write is rubbish.
So you'll understand why I can't find any kind words for any of the programmes I'm reviewing this week. Not, it must be said, that I would anyway because they're all incredibly lame and stupid and embody vir- tually everything that is wrong with modern television.
First, Badger (BBC 1, Sunday), which I hate mainly because it was quite obviously put together by a committee of focus- group-obsessed mediocrities. The public likes Soldier Soldier and Ballykissangel and anything involving animals, vets, police- men or idyllic rural locations' they must have decided. 'So why not let's make a series starring an actor from the first, written by the chap who did the second, about someone who's a policeman who spends a lot of time working with animals and vets in lovely unspoilt Northumbria.' Badger: it does exactly what it says on the tin.
The other thing that irks me about Bad- ger is that it isn't nearly as bad as I'd hoped. Kieron Prenderville's script is serviceable; Robson Greene's hero is personable; and the plot is careful to stay just the right side of wildly implausible. But this only makes me hate it even more. It's so smooth, so easy, so determinedly inoffensive, so per- fectly calculated to reduce middle-brow audiences to a state of vegetative acquies- cence. Badger isn't real drama. It's televisu- al soma.
You could lay the same charges, I think, against Dive To Shark City (BBC 1, Wednesday). 'They like sharks,' you can imagine that committee saying. 'And they like television's lovable Man Behaving Badly Neil Morrissey. So why not let's give 'em a documentary where Neil Morrissey goes diving in the Pacific with sharks?'
Now I, too, like both sharks and Neil Morrissey. But I still reckon that mixing the two ingredients was about as worthwhile and illuminating as giving Martin Clunes a ten-part series on the History of Western Art. No matter how beautiful the under- water scenery, no matter how scary the sharks, you could always guarantee that Neil would kill the experience stone dead with a deftly chosen cliché — 'I feel like a kid in a toy shop' — or japesome aside about the state of his underwear.
Finally, a programme I knew I'd loathe and duly did: Into Africa With Henry Louis Gates. Gates comes from the 'Shakespeare was black' and 'all Western culture was invented by Africans' school of chippy, `African-American' academe, I'm sure he goes down awfully well in liberal East Coast universities but I'm quite surprised — well, actually, I'm not at all surprised that he's being taken seriously by the BBC.
The idea of the series, as far as I could glean from the third episode, is for Gates to go to various bits of Africa, point out to the bemused locals that his skin is pretty much the same colour as theirs and then maybe get them to say how angry and oppressed and black they feel. Sometimes, he even deigns to throw in a bit of local his- tory as well.
Perhaps the series has helped salve the white middle-class consciences of a few BBC commissioning editors but it's a dire waste of time and money for everyone else. I mean I'm fascinated by African history but Gates's approach is so bumbling and tendentious that it's hard to take anything he says seriously. As it happens, I agree with his view that the culture of the Nubians — the 'Black Pharaohs' — has been woefully underexamined by scholars and that it's a dreadful shame tourists don't flock to great ancient cities like Meroe as they do to those built by fairer-skinned pharaohs further north. But is this really, as Gates was so keen to argue, the fault of widespread racism? Or could it be — doh! — that maybe Sudan isn't exactly the safest place for scholars and tourists to spend much time?
Oh, by the way, I discovered that the man from Tag Heuer had never even heard of me or my column. It was just a PR ruse to flatter me into coming along. But, hey, I don't care. The point is, I like expensive freebies and if there are any rich fans who want to make my life more bearable by lav- ishing me with gifts, Caribbean cruises or five-bedroomed Georgian houses (prefer- ably north of the river) I won't complain.
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