TV dinners

There was, for a while, some debate in academic circles about whether there was such a thing as cannibalism. According to a handful of anthropologists, it was a Western invention — probably unwitting — to discredit ignorant savages. It now seems clear that this view was, to coin a phrase, political correctness gone mad. There are attested examples of people eating other people, and not only after plane crashes.

But there’s no doubt that television eats itself. It nibbles at its past and chews away at its triumphs. In particular it likes to consume lovingly made programmes if only in the hope that this will enable the networks to create more lovingly made programmes, rather as some cannibals are thought to believe that eating an enemy’s heart will make them braver. On Sunday this week BBC 2 showed the whole of the first series of The Office, and stripped it down to see how and why it worked. (The fact that it provided more than three-and-a-half hours of prime-time viewing for next to nothing was, presumably, a bonus.)

It made an impressive evening. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant spent three years getting the formula right before filming even began, an attention to detail which meant that many people watching the first episode assumed it was a genuine documentary. The three most important things in any sitcom are character, character and character, so they fashioned each of theirs with a delicacy a Renaissance sculptor would envy. Gareth, for example, the nerdy butt of Tim’s jokes, was originally meant to be more macho, but then he would have been less easily a victim. Dawn is nice-looking but can’t be gorgeous because that would make Tim’s yearning impossible.