What’s the point?

The older I get the less tolerant I grow towards any form of entertainment — a play, a film, a TV programme, a book, whatever — that doesn’t deliver sufficient value. Tempus fugit, mors venit, and the last thing I want to be doing in my declining years is wasting precious leisure time on anything that doesn’t amuse me, make me happier, teach me a useful new fact about the second world war or otherwise enrich my life.

This is why, for example, I have resolved never to read another contemporary literary novel. You don’t learn anything; the plots are never quite racy or involving enough to distract you from the cares of daily life; and, most annoyingly, they’re written in an attention-seeking style which you’re supposed to linger on and cherish, like poetry, which is another thing I’m not going to bother with from now on (not that I ever did that much).

And another thing I’m probably not going to bother with any more is a Stephen Poliakoff film. Even with The Lost Prince, I was beginning to have my doubts, but his latest one, Friends & Crocodiles (BBC1, Sunday), clinched it. I stuck it out for the first half thinking, ‘Yes, yes, lovingly assembled cast, beautifully choreographed set pieces; such pretty photography and, ah yes, here comes the haunting soundtrack and the trademark languid wistfulness and aching melancholy.’

But then I realised, ‘Sod it, what’s the point? I already know Jodhi May can act. I’ve seen Damian Lewis be miles better in Band of Brothers. I’m going to get to the end of this and have nothing to show for it but a sense of frustration. I don’t believe in these people and their supposedly decade-anatomising posturing and their poncy, stilted, Poliakoff-world dialogue. It’s just polished wank, that’s what it is.