Television
Marriage lines
James Delingpole
It's all over. After a month's deluded bliss I have suddenly realised that my wife and I are incompatible. It happened while we were watching Seinfeld and The Lany Sanders Show (both BBC 2, Tuesday). But before I give you a sneak preview of the arguments soon to be presented by my divorce counsel, I thought I'd just recap on some of the programmes I meant to review earlier.
First of these is Byzantium: The Lost Empire (Channel 4, Sunday), whose early episodes I didn't watch because I resented not knowing what Byzantium was. Then belatedly it struck me: why not watch the programme and find out ...
Initially, the presenter John Romer can be slightly off-putting. He wears dodgy clothes, speaks in a funny accent and has a chummy manner more redolent of round- London double-decker tourism than stately meditations on the glory that was Con- stantinople.
But all this, you soon come to realise, is what makes him so good. He has the 'No thanks. . . just browsing.' authority of a reverend professor, but the style of a batty amateur bent on bludgeon- ing you with his passion and inspirational storytelling until you end up being just as enthusiastic as he is. Romer can make a crumbly ruin feel as if it's still inhabited, a Turkish sultan or an ancient emperor seem like old acquaintances. The best tribute I can pay his series is that next time I'm any- where near Turkey, I'm going to skip all the boring old Graeco-Roman ruins and head straight for anything by those Byzan- tium upstarts.
Television hero number two (despite the fact my wife finds him hugely attractive: more material for the divorce lawyer) is Ian Hislop, who, having already achieved the remarkable feat of turning the modern his- tory of the Church of England into grip- ping television, went on to work similar wonders with the history of our schools.
The final episode included the Islington primary school whose left-wing staff in the Seventies decided that it was a waste of time teaching the three Rs: far better to let the kids learn useful life skills, like how to shoot tin cans with home-made guns. Both the school's sacked former head and deputy still maintained that their experi- ment — which led to illiterate, knife-wield- ing nine-year-olds running riot — had worked. One of them looked as if he was now on the dole. The other, disappointing- ly, didn't.
Since I live in Hackney and only narrow- ly escaped having to send my stepson to one of its notorious schools, I tend to start foaming at the mouth whenever the subject of education crops up. Hislop, more open- minded and even-handed than me, man- aged to correct a few of my rabid preconceptions — such as the notion that there was a golden age of education. Apparently, the system has always been diverse and riddled with incompetence, loony politics and hare-brained experimen- talism. There — now Labour have a per- fect excuse for their next educational cock up.
Anyway, I was going to tell you how I discovered my wife and I were incompati- ble. In the years we've been together, we've agreed about almost everything that has been on television. We adore Frazier, King of the Hill and the wondrous Two Fat Ladies (who made a welcome return on BBC 1 on Monday); we used to like Friends but think it's gone off; and we're addicted to golf coverage. In short, we're a nauseat- ingly sharing couple.
Or were until I decided it was about time we acquired a new vice: the SeinfeldlLany Sanders Show double bill, both American sitcoms which many have declared to be in the Frazier league of genius. Now I wouldn't go that far, at least on the evi- dence of the episodes I saw, but they defi- nitely showed great promise.
Seinfeld, about an egotistical stand-up comic, is very New York, very Jewish. Sanders, about an egotistical chat-show host a la David Letterman, is also very New York, very Jewish. And very illuminating too on what goes on behind the scenes on chat shows. Clive Anderson said recently that he keeps blushing when he watches it because he thinks it's about him.
I wish I could give you a bit more detail, but unfortunately, because I watched four episodes back to back, the two shows have jumbled in my head. But as I kept saying to my wife — as much for my own benefit as hers — 'This is quite funny, don't you think? It's very New York. Very Jewish.'
My wife, however, was sulking because what she really wanted to watch was the Frazier we had missed the night before and forgotten to video. Instead, she leafed 'Sony I'm late, my car is solar powered.' through Gardens Illustrated and kept inter- rupting all the funny scenes I was trying to draw to her attention with comments like 'I don't normally like Japanese gardens but this one really works' and 'We really must order some of these dahlias for next sum- mer'.
Having written all this, I now realise that my wife may well have been right. Perhaps Seinfeld and Sanders aren't funny, after all. I have decided to postpone divorce pro- ceedings until I can make up my mind.
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