A ray of hope for television

The end of the ‘noddy shot’ is a ray of hope for television

Rod Liddle

8 September 2007

Channel Five is leading the way to greater transparency

Well, up to a point. But if the execs are serious about changing television and regaining (or even just gaining) the trust of the audience, then I reckon Kermode is pointing the way forward more usefully than, for example, the director-general of the BBC, who is sending all of his employees on a course to teach them the difference between truth and lies. Because the man from Channel Five has got right to the heart of the issue. Kermode said that these familiar TV devices were ‘hackneyed’ and also that viewers could now see through them so, effectively, they had lost their purpose.

What he didn’t quite say, but must, by implication, have meant, was that they also assume the audience is utterly stupid, bone-headed, thick as a plate of mince. That’s the crucial point — and it is an assumption TV has almost always made of its audience, which is why the quality of programmes we are given tends to decline year on year, rather than improve. And the more easily a TV producer can assume his audience to be stupid, the more likely he or she is to recourse to chicanery as a means to an end. Those TV phone lines which misled everyone were not, in most cases, a deliberate attempt to defraud viewers; they were simply the extension of a point of view that holds the viewer in complete contempt and assumes they are willing to put up with any old bollocks.

So, along with the noddy shots, let’s consign a few more of those hackneyed TV devices to the bin. The ludicrous knocking-on-the-door shot, for example — the staple of every TV documentary and something I’ve had to do in almost every film I’ve made. The audience is enjoined to believe that this is a wholly naturalistic event — the presenter, followed by a film crew, wandering up to some interviewee’s front door, knocking and being admitted. I once had to do the door-knocking thing 14 times when about to interview a very thick lady in Leicester, because no matter how much we told her not to, through gritted teeth, she kept opening the door and saying hello to me and then offered a cheery ‘And how are yow?’ to the rest of the crew. Who, of course, the audience is not meant to know exist.