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That was the year that was

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

1968: The Year of Revolutions (BBC Radio 4); The Golden Notebook (BBC Radio 4)

It’ll probably surprise many younger listeners to hear that Lessing wrote this book in 1962 before London became swinging, before the Pill and the new Abortion Bill. Women, as Lessing shows so brilliantly, have been struggling to assert the emotional honesty of their gender since time began, and, although at times they have succeeded, at others they’ve been pushed back into Pandora’s box.

This is an accomplished, compulsive adaptation by Sarah Daniels, although you need to go back to the book to appreciate the complexity of Lessing’s writing. The Nobel Prizewinning author does not like it to be described as ‘a feminist novel’ as she explained on Monday’s Woman’s Hour, disapproving of the way that fiction is now divided up into genres, as if life could ever be lived like that. But try telling that to any man who has braved Lessing’s withering insights into the war of the sexes.

Time to pay tribute to New Tricks, which ended its most recent run on BBC1 this Monday. The penultimate episode had 8.9 million viewers, which meant that more people watched it that night than Coronation Street. It has a good claim to be the most popular programme on television.

All of this brings much satisfaction. For one thing, New Tricks is everything a TV marketing man hates. It is about older people. It probably appeals to older people. Marketing men have a set of beliefs which are quite as irrational as any cult religion. One is that only young people are worth advertising to, since they are crazed neo-philiacs and can be persuaded to switch brands, whether of cars, cook-in sauce or toilet cleansers. By contrast, old people are set in their ways and no amount of advertising will shift their buying habits. This is piffle — the over-40s are every bit as likely to experiment as anyone else, and generally have more money too. But that is contrary to professional dogma and so is ignored.