In View - The Month in Television

IN VIEW - The Month in Television
March 1996

by Adrian E.C. Petford

This is the first of a new, exclusive column in which members of Kaleidoscope will review each month in British television; programmes screened, both good and bad, and comment on current issues, news and rumours. Basically, this place will be a forum for us to sound off about the great to the downright awful on our screens today. For the first column, Kaleidoscope's site maintainer casts an eye over some of television's offerings in March.

If anything could be said for television in this month of March, it would be that the output was full of unexpected surprises. Our Friends in the North (15 January-11 March) completed its long run in fine style, proving that even in these days of formulaic production-line TV ruled by the purse-strings there's still room for another epic drama. The surprise here was that a lot of the plot threads were not resolved in the expected way. Mary (Gina McKee) and Nicky (Christopher Eccleston) were largely on still on bad terms by the end, but with a vague glimmer of hope that their relationship might survive; Geordie (Daniel Craig), who really suffered throughout the whole saga, finished up in just as bad a position as he was in in 1964 and Tosker (Mark Strong), surely the original no-hoper of the group, despite having made and lost several fortunes, ended up in the best position among the four friends, at last realising his dream of becoming an entertainer. Peter Flannery's saga has been totally compulsive viewing, that has sustained a magnificent level of quality across its whole immense length and it was welcome to see he didn't resort to "happy ending" cop-outs that would have cheapened the bleak, depressing tone of what had gone before. BBC2 spent its entire annual drama budget on this series, but come the BAFTA awards next year, I suspect they won't have needed to produce anything else. Certainly when it comes to handing out the acting honours, all four regulars deserve a nomination, and to these I would also add the ever-capable Peter Vaughan, who turned in a brilliant performance as Nicky's father, Felix.

Another series that continues to explore new ground is Goodnight Sweetheart (26 December 1995-4 March 1996), the third series of which concluded this month. That rare phenomenon in TV comedy, a series that boasts both massive ratings and critical acclaim, the new run of episodes did not show any sign of flagging; in fact, despite the involvement of several different writers on the team, every episode was outstanding. The implications of Gary (Nicholas Lyndhurst) time-hopping between present-day wife Yvonne (Michelle Holmes) and wartime girlfriend Phoebe (Dervla Kirwan) are now starting to be explored at length, and the brilliant shock cliffhanger should provide them with enough material for the entire next series. The quality of the performances is universally superb, the writing is tight, the research is painstakingly historically accurate and it's funny and touching to boot. Hilarious episodes were balanced with more poignant dramatic ones in an effective mix. More than any other, this third series provided much opportunity for drama and character development and really is far too good to be regarded as a sitcom. Such a label demeans something that is now much closer to the comedy-drama genre.

Multiple appearances were also a trend of the month, with Goodnight Sweetheart's Dervla Kirwan co-starring simultaneously in Ballykissangel (11 February-17 March) alongside Stephen Tompkinson of Drop The Dead Donkey (also now back on our screens in his more familiar Damien Day incarnation) fame. This casting and the marketing were obviously calculated to entice fans of both series... they succeeded with this one, and I'm very pleased I decided to tune in. Generally, I'm not a fan of the usual Sunday early evening drama genre, but Ballykissangel has been a gem. From the ever-capable pen of Kieran Prendiville, this has set just the right tone for Sunday nights, being a mix of both serious drama with strong characters and gentle, wry humour against a stunning County Wicklow backdrop. It was also notable for another enjoyable performance from Tony (Between the Lines) Doyle, cast against type as a sort of Irish equivalent of Arthur Daley (To make matters even more confusing, Doyle also cropped up just minutes later in his regular role in ITV's Band of Gold, the second series of which began on 3rd March!). The BBC were so convinced Ballykissangel would be a hit that a second series was commissioned before the first had even been screened, and the gamble seems to have paid off, with audiences of over fifteen million glued avidly to the goings-on in this small Irish town. The only criticism that could be levelled is that the run was far too short at only six episodes. Fortunately, the powers-that-be have already addressed this, and next year's series will boast a more ample eight.

Without Walls returned, and within a few weeks had managed to scale both the peaks of excellence and the troughs of mediocrity. I expected their Starsky and Hutch retrospective (26 March) in the C4PD strand to be strictly the latter; actually it turned out to be actually rather monumentally good, showing none of the trademark vacuousness of most nostalgia shows of this type. Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul were obvious contributors, but from the outset is was clear the researchers knew their stuff; we were also treated to original behind the scenes footage, comment from the series creator and associate producer, as well as other members of the cast such as Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear) and Bernie Hamilton (Captain Dobey). Now I would be the first to admit almost complete ignorance of Starsky and Hutch (other than watching it avidly twenty years ago), but I came away from this documentary much more knowledgeable about the series and appreciative of its significance to the TV cop show genre. With editions on Z Cars and The Professionals to follow, this documentary boded very well for what is still to come. A real revelation.

Unfortunately the same could not be said for the previous week's opinion slot, which was taken by Janet Street-Porter, former head of "youth" programming at the BBC and also responsible for bringing us that powerhouse of intellectual and worthy output known as Live TV. Yes, Janet has now embraced the information age and decided to take her best shot at Internet users in J'accuse Technonerds (19 March), a thirty minute rant that amounted to little more than likening net-users to modern-day stamp collectors or trainspotters through the use of cheap insults to disguise the spuriousness of the overall argument. All the tired stereotypes were wheeled out: net users are "nerds", "sads", "boring" and "socially challenged", but at least the Internet does provide the public service of "keeping the sads off the streets". Basically the crux of her argument was that the Internet is no substitute for real experiences; the information there is of a poor quality, home pages are "like home brewed beer... not as good as the real thing", it's slow, it keeps crashing and it elevates nerd technospeak to a high artform. Needless to say, Street-Porter was not able to provide a single piece of actual evidence to back up any of these points, and ended up looking something of an imbecile alongside the well-argued pro-Internet stances (and indeed, the hostile ones too) of the other contributors, such as Eva Pascoe, co-founder of the Cyberia cafe chain. True, some information available on the net is of extremely poor quality, but then what information resource of any type doesn't have strengths and weaknesses? For every bad Web site there are many outstanding ones, and overall quality thresholds are improving all the time. Good page authoring inspires the hacks to pull their socks up, too. Now even people with next to no computer knowledge can get on-line and surfing in minutes in, say, a cybercafe, through user-friendly interfaces unthinkable a few years ago when UNIX and text-only access ruled supreme. So much for the supposed need for advanced technical knowledge. To the slowness and lack of quality arguments I would simply say that the net is only as good as the person using it and an inability to locate relevant information must surely show the overall inadequacy of the user's interests rather than anything lacking in the actual resource.

The fact Janet Street-Porter felt the need to perpetuate an empty (and generally inaccurate) stereotype of the average net-user shows what little grasp she has of the real scope of the Internet. Even more insidious was the fact that Davey Winder, the noted Internet journalist and guru, took part in the programme and advanced an argument about the net being an invaluable enabling technology for people with disabilities. A good and worthy issue to raise... what a shame it ended up on the cutting room floor in favour of endlessly-repeated jibes about how net-users should embrace real experiences and generally "get out more". Apparently, participation sports are going through a boom like never before; specialist magazines are thriving and visits to cultural institutions are ever-increasing. I wonder how many of those people use the net as a way to broaden those experiences and increase their new-found knowledge? If Street-Porter had her way, this vast, sprawling and truly internationalist resource would have had its plugs pulled long ago. And having recently heard about the output of the Live TV cable channel, which includes items of such monumental cultural importance as topless darts and the "News Bunny" (someone in a rabbit costume making "appropriate" gestures in the background during news broadcasts), I'll take sitting in front of my computer screen any time. There's no place on the Internet for such drivel, thank you very much, Janet.

Mind you, cable television has other things to answer for apart from providing employment for Janet Street-Porter. SelecTV, the repeats channel run by the production group of the same name, has been a welcome source of vintage programming in the last few months, providing such rarely-seen gems as Yorkshire's The Sandbaggers as well as the entire Alomo/WitzEnd back catalogue. The jewel in their crown as far as I was concerned was Shine on Harvey Moon, one of my all-time favourite series, which I was looking forward to seeing again for the first time in over ten years. Such pleasure was quickly dispelled when I realised what an appalling mess they had made of this repeat run. The series was originally a a half-hour sitcom that was later extended to a fifty minute slot in line with its more drama-based writing, and I expected the first series would be edited into double-length editions to fit in with the format of the later episodes. The first two episodes were so compiled, but instead of doing the same with those following, episodes three to six were butchered into a single fifty-minute programme that obviously resulted in huge, unexplained leaps in continuity. The whole thing just did not make sense. But worse was to come. Shine on Harvey Moon was a series driven almost entirely by its tight, continually developing storyline with many plots developing across entire seasons. What then is the point of skipping episodes and leaving plot threads dangling aimlessly without explanation? The first episode of the second series, setting up the whole situation for that run of episodes, was missed out and a lot of the mid-series episodes also disappeared; in some cases, several episodes were jumped, making for wild gaps in the continuity. Characters appeared and disappeared for no reason, and any continuing storyline was rendered completely meaningless. Perhaps realising their monumental hash-up, SelecTV pulled the run prematurely and it was a merciful killing. Given how heavily they have marketed Shine on Harvey Moon as a selling point of their channel, it seems stupid to provide such a pitiful, inadequate run. Such a significant series deserves better treatment, and I hope that SelecTV get their act together if they decide to show it again. I would certainly have rather not seen it at all than have witnessed this atrocity.

Hopefully someone else will be sounding off in this space next month, but if not, I'll see you again in four weeks' time!

Copyright © Adrian E.C. Petford 1996. All Rights Reserved.

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