Television
Why do they bother?
James Delmgpole
Whenever I ring up Carlton to ask for preview tapes, I feel like the man who goes into the pet shop to buy a cute little fluffy bunny, only to take it home to feed to his python. The girls in the press office are so friendly and helpful and eager to please me with their exciting new product. And I know there's a 99 per cent certainty that I'm going to clamp my jaws round its head, crush its shivering body and swallow it whole.
But that was never my intention, really it wasn't, when I ordered up Canton's 'presti- gious new drama' Heat of the Sun. I wanted to see it because I used to be a fan of its star Trevor 'Eddie Shoestring' Eve, because I quite fancy co-star Susannah Harker and because it's set in colonial Kenya.
Kenya is one of my most favourite places in the whole wide world. I even have happy memories of the time I was laid low there with amoebic dysentery. I was nursed back to health by a charming ex-pat couple called Rennie and Christine Barnes, my every need tended to by their houseboy, their ayah and a fierce Masai called Pota who'd lurk in their garden at night, waiting to kill burglars with his bow and poisoned arrows. Safaris; pink gins; dinner at the Muthaiga. I could quite handle this colo- nial lifestyle, I decided.
These days, I gather, now that Moi has gone completely AWOL, Kenya isn't nearly so wonderful as it used to be. I dare say it never was. But, if I could have been there at any time in its history, I'd definitely have gone for that gloriously debauched inter- war 'Happy Valley' set era, as portrayed in the book and film White Mischief and in Carlton's lavish three-parter Heat of the Sun (ITV, Wednesday).
This may seem a horribly cruel thing to say — because it's really nowhere near as bad — but Heat of the Sun has much in common with Canton's best-known atroci- ty, Sharpe. Both are expensively shot in exotic locations (Zimbabwe doubles for 'I really miss the 'And finally' segments.' Kenya) with realistic crowd scenes and decent costume budgets; both are designed primarily for viewers with low IQs; and both feature a dour, chippy, all-action prole hero, surrounded by asinine toffs.
Trevor Eve, so amiable as Radio West's dishevelled investigative reporter Eddie Shoestring, now has the thankless task of playing a humourless copper called Albert Tyburn. Tyburn has been despatched to the colonies having disgraced himself at Scot- land Yard by dispensing summary justice to a gay paedophile serial-killer who would otherwise have got off scot free because, yes, he was a Member of the Establishment.
This is why Tyburn has little time for people with fruity accents, fancy titles or silly names like Gussy, Boy and Mrs Tre- fusis. He also takes an extremely dim view of racism (he calls his askaris 'gentlemen' and is most surprised to learn that the club is for 'Europeans only), he abhors big game hunting (cue scene of ranked hoorays butchering an innocent lioness and her dar- ling baby cubs); and, though he's a superin- tendent, he certainly won't wear his colonial policeman's uniform because it's all poofy and fancy and posh. Tyburn's real problem, of course, is that he's a Nineties man who still hasn't quite grasped that an irresponsible scriptwriter has gone and dumped him in the 1930s.
Perhaps those with Puritan sympathies — which presumably, in Blair's new Britain, means pretty much everyone — will warm to this thuggish bore. Personally, I kept rooting for all the effete baddies and wondering why this tiresome prude had to go poking his nose into their innocent coke-snorting, cross-dressing, wife-swap- ping fun and games. It's what Thirties Kenya was designed for, after all.
As I said before, it was never my inten- tion to have another gratuitous dig at Carl- ton. Maybe it did lead the way in the dumbing down of British television, but now even the BBC's at it, as witness every- thing from Rhodes to the dreaded The Ambassador (BBC 1, Sunday). No, Heat of the Sun is merely another depressing symp- tom of television drama's worsening ten- dency to discriminate against any viewer who possesses the remotest scintilla of intelligence.
In most cases, this could so easily be rec- tified. With Heat of the Sun, all you need is slightly less heavy-handed direction; greater subtlety of characterisation and a finer feeling for period nuance; and maybe a script editor bright enough to wipe out the more agonising cliches — like the scene where the rookie policeman throws up after seeing a dead body, only to have Tyburn say: 'She your first? The first one's always bad.'
Because if you're not going to make the extra effort, why bother going to all the trouble and expense of taking a star cast to Zimbabwe? Why not just make something involving five Equity rejects, a handicam and a gravel pit in Surrey?
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