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. The appalling Finchy was created in order to make David Brent look better. Brent himself wants to be admired and loved for his laddish humour but is terrified by authority. The scene where he goes to the warehouse with a female executive while the workers are happily watching dogs copulate is agonising because he is desperate to ingratiate himself with everyone there. All the elements in his character tear each other apart. He is someone who is totally self-conscious and not remotely self-aware.

Once you have the characters in place, everything else follows smoothly, whether it’s a pub quiz, a takeover by head office or just a bloke standing to the edge of the screen eating a scotch egg. The series was put together with the same care and skill as a Chippendale sideboard. No wonder television executives continue to paw and pore over it.

The Choir: Unsung Town (BBC 2, Tuesday) was about the redemptive power of art, and so had a religious, even religiose, feel. The sweet-natured, perky and fresh-faced choirmaster, Gareth Malone, went to a place called South Oxhey, basically a council estate dumped in a field in Hertfordshire. For the population to be saved, South Oxhey had to be depicted as an outer circle of Hell, packed with boozy geezers and single-parent mums on the edge of their sanity. (‘I didn’t know racism existed till I came to South Oxhey,’ said Dee, the black woman who turned out to be Gareth’s star soloist.)

Anyhow, he whips them into line, the community suddenly discovers its purpose and they applaud Dee wildly for her solo in ‘Higher and Higher’, a gospel song about profane love. I met Gareth the other day, and he is exactly as billed — enthusiastic and charming. The whole show is inspiring, but perhaps ever so faintly patronising.