You were probably expecting me to review Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One, Monday) this week but I’m a bit off Afghanistan programmes at the moment. Not to the point where I won’t watch them all the time to the exclusion of almost all else. Just to the point where, at the end, I feel ever so slightly, ‘Was that it?’ Don’t get me wrong. I have the most enormous respect for the brave folk who make these programmes — still more for the men doing the fighting. But I’ve yet to see the documentary which properly conveys to people who’ve never done it — e.g., me — what it’s like to be involved in a serious firefight.
On his tour of Helmand with the Royal Anglian Regiment, Kemp experienced a gun battle of pant-wetting intensity. Seven rocket-propelled grenades flew inches above his head. He thought he was going to die. In the hands of a print journalist or novelist, this would be gold dust. On TV — to judge by the preview clip I saw on the internet — it’s a lot of wasted risk. Your cameraman quite rightly hits the deck. So does your presenter. You get six minutes’ wobbly close-ups of Afghan dust, with background whizzes and bangs which must mean an awful lot if you’re there — but perhaps less if you’re the viewer.
The best war footage seems to come more by luck than accident. My current favourite is the one on YouTube where someone is filming from a Humvee driving fast in convoy down a highway in Iraq. Suddenly the roadside just ahead erupts in a huge bubble, almost as if it’s made of liquid. The driver swerves instinctively and the crew swear with relief. They’ve just survived an enormous bomb buried beneath the tarmac.
But I’m off Iraq, too, a bit, I’m afraid.
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