Layman’s terms

If journalism is the first draft of history, Norma Percy’s programmes are the second draft, or possibly the first rewrite. Actually, it’s sometimes hard to see how much more the historians will be able to find. She and Brook Lapping productions go back to find the people who were taking the decisions at the time and, since they are almost invariably now out of office, they are happy to talk, or in some cases confess. The star interviewees on Iran and the West this week were former Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, which was quite a coup.

Now and again the programmes shock us with the sheer shamelessness of the characters. Take George Schulz, Reagan’s secretary of state, on the subject of the Iran–Iraq war. The Americans had just seen the effect of Saddam’s chemical weapons which fossilised their victims in the exact pose they were in when they took their last breath. Schulz: ‘We wanted them to stop using chemical weapons, but at the same time we didn’t want Iran to win the war.’

There are layers of irony here: for a start, they were uneasily willing for Saddam to employ the horrifying weapons he did have, but two decades later it was essential to invade Iraq because of the horrifying weapons he didn’t — as it happens — have. It’s not often you see realpolitik exposed so clearly. No other programme on television could bring you such information. It is an almost unique format.

Wine — The Firm (BBC4, Monday) was the exact and precise opposite of Oz and James’s jaunt through the vineyards. The first episode was about Berry Bros and Rudd, the St James’s wine merchants. These people take their wine very seriously; what was fascinating was the way that under the bonhomie and cheerful glugging was a tense game of chicken being played with the prices. Basically, the best-known red Bordeaux are ludicrously overpriced. BBR has to guess whether its cash-strapped customers will still accept these mad valuations and so pay the chateaux accordingly. It’s like watching TV poker, with posher players.

The Krypton Factor is back on ITV. It doesn’t really work this time. All game shows ultimately depend on us being interested in the contestants. Watching people about whom we know little and care less drearily trying to remember shapes and colours, and crawling round damp copses with ropes, doesn’t engage us at all.

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Frank P

February 23rd, 2009 6:33pm Report this comment

"… while he is undoubtedly a superb television performer"

Really? Paxo has become a parody of himself: arrogant, lugubrious and boring.

First Dimbleby; then Marr; now Paxman - all political-hacks-cum-anchors (a consonant missing there perhaps) unjustifiably gifted a series by the Beeb about Britain's history; all done better before by experts who actually knew their subjects.

Dimbleby just about pulled it off, because he isn't a snide with a built in sneer and appeared to enjoy his boondoggle as well as picking up the second pension royalties. Marr wandered through his benefit match as though he hadn't been there when any of it happened and accepted the account of the Gramscian disciples as if it was kosher rather than counter-culture agitprop, pop music footage and plain bullshit.

Paxman has told us nothing so far that wasn't recently explained much more generously and interestingly by Adam Hart-Davis in his excellent 2001 series "What the Victorians did for Us", which is currently being repeated, so why is even more of my poll tax being used for over-priced Paxo to stuff the Victorians? Last night's emphasis on sexual repression and hypocrisy was a bit rich from this compére, who seemed to take a somewhat unhealthy interest in onanism and syphilis – not to mention ladies’ corsets! The lady trying them on took a definite interest in him, too, seemingly as a possible SM partner and the edgy exchange made me wonder whether he was a possible punter, too, albeit his having just whinged about the whited sepulchres of Victorian chauvinistic men (his example of some Sussex photographer taking saucy pictures of his missus and girl friend seemed a bit tame considering today's tsunami of TV porn).

Actually, as we normally see only the top half of Paxman, the only thing new that emerged for me from the two episodes so far (and I shan't bother with the rest) was that Paxo is now as bandy as a crippled crow: he couldn't stop a pig in a ginnel. His tailor should take that into account – the drainpipes just accentuate it. And the gimmick of the pink shirt with one button too many undone had already been trademarked by Dimbleby major for his premature golden handshake series.

Before he was elevated to TV celebrity Jeremy was quite a good investigative reporter. I remember his probe into the Calvi affair in the Eighties. Horses for courses! This equine-featured newsreader was anything but an “excellent choice” for yet another romp through Victorian Britain, particularly in an age when vice and hypocrisy are worse now than then. Unconvincing cant! And this time it’s the vowel that is questionable.