I’ve got this brilliant idea for a Sunday night TV series.
I’ve got this brilliant idea for a Sunday night TV series. It’s called Inspector Fluffy and His Agreeable Pipe. Every week, Inspector Fluffy (Stephen Fry) will travel to a picturesque corner of Britain in his battered Morris Traveller, giving tearaway gypsy children clips round the ear, discovering that it was a magpie that really took the silverware, judging marrow competitions in vicarage gardens. While cogitating on the latest mystery, he will suck on his agreeable pipe, with lots of stupendous Apprentice-style aerial shots showing the English countryside in all its gasp-inducing majesty.
It’s easy to take the mickey out of Sunday night TV but I think what we snooty critics sometimes forget is it’s not there for us. It’s not there to be clever or challenging or even good. Its sole purpose is to distract the millions of people out there who would otherwise be thinking, ‘Heavens, it’s Monday tomorrow. Work. Bills. Get up early. Horror. Better kill myself right now.’
Last Sunday’s perfect anti-suicide moment was Martin Clunes riding a big cart horse in the sea in Martin Clunes: Islands of Britain (ITV1). Up until that point, you might have been thinking, as I was, ‘Truly, this is the most staggeringly inane travel series ever.’ Clunes has been travelling from island to island around Britain, for no other reason than that he was once in a popular sitcom, islands look great shot from a helicopter and the ones nearest Britain are cheapest to film. One island — Sark, I think — he described as: ‘Very different.’ Then added guiltily, ‘I keep saying this about all the islands I’ve visited. But it is.’
But then he rode the big cart horse into the sea and everything was OK. The horse was obviously really happy in the water, willingly submerging himself up to his ears. Clunes was happy too. At last he had found his intellectual soul-mate. ‘Aaaah!’ we went, at home, choking back the tears at the lovable charmingness of it all.
Over on BBC2, Dr Alice Roberts was performing a similar service in the guise of presenting a very, VERY important programme about anthropology called The Incredible Human Journey. ‘I’m on a QUEST,’ she kept telling us. ‘I’m travelling to one of the most remote villages in all Siberia, to find out…’
‘No you’re not, love,’ I wanted to say. ‘You’re not on a quest and you’re not finding out anything. All this stuff you’re telling us is totally known. You’re not a bleeding detective. You’re a girlie TV presenter with a doctorate, and your job is to pretend as best you can that this is a proper, grown-up fact programme rather than just your usual Sunday night travelogue fluff.’
I would have respected her a lot more if she’d drunk that cup of freshly drawn reindeer blood. Ray Mears would have done. And Bruce Parry. Still, the Apprentice-style aerial footage was pretty; Dr Alice was perfectly pleasant company; and one did learn one or two interesting things — e.g., just how important the invention of the needle was. (Without it early man would never have been able to sew together the reindeer fur outfits you need to survive an Ice Age.)
1066: The Battle for Middle Earth (Channel 4, Monday, Tuesday) was great, though. Director Justin Hardy got three hours to show the three great battles of 1066 — Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings — from the intimate perspective of the men who had to spill their guts and brains in them. The fighting was very convincingly done (not your usual half dozen re-enactors filmed blurrily from different angles to make you think there’s more) and the human side of the story (the mead oaths, the village life, the superstitions) sweetly and movingly told. In these stingy, fearful times this was a bold commission from Channel 4 but it really paid off, being not only entertaining but genuinely informative. I hope it commissions more in a similar vein.
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