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No rude awakening

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 9th July 2008

Banged Up (Channel 4, Monday)

Or b) smash his fists against the wall so that his knuckles bled; demand attention from the prison psychiatrist; and then be sent home on compassionate grounds, there to be greeted by his parents with almost as much teary sympathy as if he’d just been chained up by the Taleban for three months.

‘You’ve loorned your lesson, now, haven’t you son?’ said Biffa’s Fatha. ‘Howay man, Fatha, I’ll never go to prison after that,’ said Biffa, all meek and repentant. Cut to scene five minutes later where Biffa downs in one a six-pack of Tennants Super. Cut to scene ten minutes later where Biffa beats to a pulp someone he thinks has been looking at him all funny like.

All right, they didn’t actually show those last two scenes either, but you can bet they’re going to happen sooner or later. How can I be so sure? Because Biffa — in common with most of, if not all, the 16- and 17-year-old participants in the experiment, and indeed in Britain generally — had absolutely no grasp of the relationship between cause and effect. Biffa likes hitting people. He doesn’t like prison. But he doesn’t understand the incompatibility between the two intellectual positions, because that would involve accepting a moral responsibility for his actions, which is something very few people are capable of doing these days.

Though the authoritative (and frankly very dreary) presence of ex-Home-Secretary David Blunkett on its fake prison board got it talked about on Radio Four as if it were an important thing, all Banged Up really is more ‘louts in jeopardy’ entertainment in the manner of Bad Lads Army and Brat Camp. Only not as good, or satisfying.