Lies and humiliation
Extras (BBC 1), Parkison: The Final Conversation (ITV), Sense and Sensibility (BBC 1), David Cameron's Incredible Journey (BBC 2), The Hidden Story of Jesus (Channel 4)
Parky met all his favourite guests in Parkinson — the Final Conversation (ITV, 15 December). The received wisdom is that Parky was a good interviewer because he let his subjects talk — unlike, say, Jonathan Ross, who is the only star of his show, or Richard Madeley, whose guests sometimes sit slack-jawed, wondering if they will ever get to say anything. Parky’s secret was being the common man who is as much at ease with the great and famous as we’d like to be, except we would be tongue-tied and ask stupid questions, like ‘what’s it like being famous, then?’ For example, the late Alan Coren once met Michael Caine and could think of nothing to say, but remembered that he lived near Richard Gere. So he heard himself asking if Gere was gay. ‘Put it this way,’ said Caine, ‘he’d help out if they were short-handed.’
Parky got them to do their schtick, like a polished after-dinner speech or stage act chopped up into a conversation. This was only occasionally revealing but was always fun. For me the best moment came when Caine did his impression of people doing Michael Caine impressions — cruel and very funny.
Sense and Sensibility (BBC1, New Year’s Day) began with a masculine arm slipping a lace camisole off the shoulder of a young woman...Aha, we thought, this is more Andrew Davies than Jane Austen. Yet Mr Davies kept his libido in check and a very satisfying serial it made. No doubt we will see David Morrissey’s heaving buttocks in the last episode as Colonel Brandon gets down to business, but in the meantime Davies has preserved the mood and, more important, the rhythm of the original.
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Highbrow
January 3rd, 2008 11:43pmI have always thought Parkinson absurd, a grown man, who was allegedly once a serious journalist,asking sycophantic questions, doubtless enabled by an army of earnest researchers, of actresses and rock singers, whom he pretended to take seriously. His one service to the cause of sanity in public life was that, by pretending to take these hapless bimbos at their own face value, he induced them into displays of hubris which exposed their own absurd self-absorbtion to a grateful public. Helen Mirren was a prime example. If only one had only seen her in "The Queen" and not subsequently on Parkinson. One is reminded of Woody Allan saying that if he had his life over again he would do everything the same but would not have seen the film of "The Magus".Was Parkinson not just a canny businessman who jumped on the celebrity culture bandwagon, saw he was onto a good thing, lowered his standards and made a pile out of being lowbrow? In Blair's Britain, this is the way to a knighthood or the peerage.