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This programme contains some strong language | 0:00:02 | 0:00:07 | |
Hello from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts | 0:00:07 | 0:00:10 | |
here in London, where, over the next two hours, | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
we're going to be looking at some of the best | 0:00:13 | 0:00:15 | |
of this country's television from the last 60 or so years, | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
and we'll try to make sense of the momentous impact | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
that television has had on the lives of just about every one of us. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:25 | |
We're joined by some of the people responsible for the programmes | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
which have moved us, made us laugh, made us angry and got us interested, | 0:00:28 | 0:00:32 | |
and we'll be finding out whether they agree on the scale and spread | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
of the influence of television | 0:00:36 | 0:00:37 | |
and whether they think that we're now at a pivotal moment of change. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
We're taking Britain as our canvas, because we were in at the beginning | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
and we can still be up there with the best in the world. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
Here's a taster of what has so enlarged our views of the world | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
because of that box in the corner, or that flat screen on the wall. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:56 | |
# Bring me sunshine... # | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
Television. I think that nothing has had so great an impact | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
on our daily lives since the Industrial Revolution. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
-It brings extraordinary images... -# All the while... # | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
..instant news and information. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
This is it. We're walking into Kabul city. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
Drama... | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
-We are emperors of Rome, Andrew. -Entertainment... | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
And a range of knowledge that our ancestors wouldn't have credited. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:29 | |
And it's all happened in the past 75 years, | 0:01:31 | 0:01:33 | |
and already we can barely imagine what life was like before it. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
But what a trip it's been. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
# Bring me love... # | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
There was a time when the nearest you got to seeing | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
world events was in the photographs in newspapers, or magazines, | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
or you heard about them in radio - | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
the John the Baptist of the communications industry - | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
but television changed the game. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
It's almost impossible for anyone under the age of about 40 | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
to conceive of a world without live images of news | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
unfolding from across the planet. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:07 | |
-Come to West Berlin. -CHEERING | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
The tidal wave arrived with ferocious speed and force. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
While TV has continued to chronicle key events for ourselves and future | 0:02:14 | 0:02:19 | |
generations, it's also reminded us how we've become who we are. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
This is the battlefield of Hastings, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
and here, one kind of England was annihilated, | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
and another kind of England was set up in its place. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
How we've learned about the world around us... | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
Galileo stepped up the magnification of the telescope to 30 - | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
and he turned it on the stars. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
Chartered our cultural achievements... | 0:02:43 | 0:02:45 | |
All the great civilisations or civilising epochs | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
have had a weight of energy behind them. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
..and ensured we can't forget our catastrophic mistakes. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:56 | |
And if we think the barriers of class and privilege | 0:03:08 | 0:03:10 | |
still exist in our society, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
consider a world before television, when the establishment | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
was able to hide within the corridors of power, | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
unreachable and unaccountable. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
Welcome to Senate House, at the University of Cambridge, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
for 90 minutes of question, answer and live debate. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
Television has allowed us to participate in democratic debate, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
and to have a voice where we had no voice before, and in the process, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:34 | |
has even given politicians some of their best lines. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
I know he's very keen on summing up policy in six words. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:41 | |
Well, how about this? You are the weakest link. Goodbye. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
LAUGHTER AND CHEERING | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
And TV has been democratic in many other ways. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
Activities and experiences, once the privilege of the entitled | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
ruling classes, have been made available to all of us. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
THEY SING: Nessun Dorma | 0:04:01 | 0:04:06 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
As technology has developed, the scale and ambition of TV | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
has enabled us to explore the fullness of the Earth. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
It's opened our eyes to the natural world | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
in wholly unexpected and magical ways, charting the unseen, | 0:04:23 | 0:04:28 | |
uncovering the unknown and alerting our attention to the problems | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
we may face in the future. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
Sea ice will refreeze this winter, but it's getting weaker and thinner, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
which means that in summers to come it's more likely to break up | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
and melt, a pattern that scientists say is accelerating. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
And of course, perhaps the greatest achievement of all, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:49 | |
TV has taken us beyond our own planet. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
Eagle, we've got you now. It's looking good, over. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
That's one small step for man. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:59 | |
One giant leap for mankind. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
Back here on Earth, television has shown us our bodies | 0:05:03 | 0:05:05 | |
from birth to death... | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
She's the most complicated thing on Earth, and during her lifetime, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
she'll achieve the most amazing things. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
It has recorded the way we live our lives... | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:22 | |
We have maps from the 1950s... | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
..and allowed us to explore our individual histories. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
Charwoman. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:29 | |
SHOUTING AND CHEERING | 0:05:37 | 0:05:38 | |
And the winner of The Voice is... | 0:05:38 | 0:05:40 | |
-It's discovered talent in all fields. -..Leanne! | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
CHEERING And inspired everyone to have a go. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
Even if, sometimes, it ends in tears. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:51 | |
Ben, you're fired. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:53 | |
Thank you very much for a wonderful opportunity, sir. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
OK. Off you go. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
And of course, it's provided great entertainment | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
at the press of a button. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
I think we're on a winner here, Trig, all right? | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
Play it nice and cool, son. Nice and cool, you know what I mean? | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
-Sorry we're closing for lunch. -Never mind that, my lad, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
I wish to complain about this parrot, | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
Oh, yes, the Norwegian Blue. What's wrong with it? | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
I'll tell you what's wrong with it. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:22 | |
It's dead, that's what's wrong with it. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:24 | |
All this and more from the comfort of our own homes, | 0:06:24 | 0:06:26 | |
where staying in has become the new going out. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
We've been united, sharing experiences, accumulating memories, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
being comforted, being challenged, and with luck, being enlightened. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
That is the man the world has been waiting to see. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
No wonder it can be addictive. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
Nothing like it has ever happened before. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
And the scale of the television revolution | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
on the make-up of our daily lives is impossible to overestimate. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
Who wants transparency when you can have magic? | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
Who wants prose when you can have poetry? | 0:06:57 | 0:07:01 | |
CHORAL SINGING | 0:07:01 | 0:07:02 | |
There is no question but that television pushed frontiers out. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
When I think about my father, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:10 | |
he only had a chance to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony once. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
You know? | 0:07:14 | 0:07:15 | |
And, er... | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
My grandfather had never moved outside of his own village. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
He had no idea Everest existed, or the centre of Africa. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:28 | |
And the social people he mixed with were within that area. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
I know, because people of my own name, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
they're still living around there, and that was the world for them. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:40 | |
And there's no question | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
but that television burst all those frontiers. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
Both geographically, and socially, | 0:07:46 | 0:07:50 | |
and scientifically, and every way you can think of. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
Suddenly, and perhaps, it's bewildering. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
Perhaps it goes too far. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:00 | |
But it's certainly changed beyond recognition, | 0:08:00 | 0:08:05 | |
the world as it was in the 19... Before the First World War. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
Later we'll cast a more critical eye over some of the many ways in which | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
television has transformed our lives, but first of all, | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
can we agree on the scale of the revolution we're talking about? | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
I'm joined by Joan Bakewell, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:20 | |
one of Britain's most respected broadcasters, | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
who began on BBC2's Late Night Line-Up in the 1960s, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
and by historian and broadcaster David Olusoga, | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
who recently won a Bafta for Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
David, did we exaggerate in that introduction | 0:08:32 | 0:08:34 | |
-the size, impact and place of television? -I don't think we did. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
I think we've taken a long time to allow this medium to settle in. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:44 | |
It was described as a craze in the 1950s, along with rock and roll | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
and dancing. The idea that it was a craze, that it was a phase, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
it was something we'd grow out of - no-one talks in those terms now. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
And I've said, rather fancifully, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
it could bear comparison with the Industrial Revolution, | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
happening inside instead of outside, | 0:09:00 | 0:09:02 | |
but can you think of it on a global scale of changing | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
the way that the human species is leading its life and seeing itself | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
lead this life and being human, | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
-as big as that? -I think there's communal events, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
like the release of Nelson Mandela. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
Those events were only possible, they're part of everybody's memory, | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
everyone remembers where they were when they happened, remembers | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
watching the television screen... That's never been possible before. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
The example that historians tend to use is it took about a week | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
for the news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination | 0:09:32 | 0:09:34 | |
to reach everyone in America. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
When something big happens now, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:38 | |
we all share in it, and we've got used to that idea, | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
-but it's revolutionary. -And what effect does that have? | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
Knowing it so instantly and so globally? | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
I think we're still finding out. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:49 | |
I think the idea of instant news is something we've come to fear, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
it's something we've got used to, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:54 | |
what its impact will be in more troubled political times, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
we're still finding out. | 0:09:57 | 0:09:58 | |
75 years is a pretty young invention. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
It's still in its infancy. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:02 | |
I don't think we know the scale of the television revolution, | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
cos we're still living in it. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:07 | |
Joan, you came into television | 0:10:07 | 0:10:09 | |
when it had really hit its stride in this country. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:11 | |
Did you feel you were going into something new, | 0:10:11 | 0:10:13 | |
never been in before, did you feel this was exciting? | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
I thought it was the poor relation of radio and it might prosper. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
It was very popular, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:22 | |
because it was the coronation that made it popular. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
But I... I spent my childhood in a world | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
in which there were very few images of any kind. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
I mean, newspapers were very thin in the war, | 0:10:30 | 0:10:32 | |
there were no photographs, there was picture post - so imagery, | 0:10:32 | 0:10:37 | |
the actual pictures of the world, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
were very, very rare in my childhood. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:41 | |
So the arrival of something that just threw at you so many images, | 0:10:41 | 0:10:46 | |
even though they were very often ordinary, was an enormous shock. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:50 | |
All we wanted to do was stare - | 0:10:50 | 0:10:51 | |
stare and stare at what was put in front of us. Not only that, | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
it became very collegiate in that the screens were very small - | 0:10:55 | 0:11:00 | |
erm, there was only one per house, if the house had one. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:03 | |
So the family congregated, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
so you have the social impact of television, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
in which everyone came into the same room in the evening, | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
watched from start to finish, | 0:11:11 | 0:11:12 | |
and discussed it next morning with their neighbours | 0:11:12 | 0:11:15 | |
and their work colleagues. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:16 | |
So, in social terms, it was very cohesive. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
Having mentioned radio... | 0:11:19 | 0:11:20 | |
I was working in radio at the beginning of the '60s, | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
and radio was still very strong, | 0:11:23 | 0:11:24 | |
and thinking that television was draining some of the talent away, | 0:11:24 | 0:11:28 | |
but radio would prevail, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:29 | |
and then, about five or six years later, that radio would be dead. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
Neither of those things have happened, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
but television was in that balance for a while in the ideas that people | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
had, although not so much in the viewing figures. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
I think the problems with the technology, when, as Joan describes, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
the TV was right at the edge of what was possible when it was produced. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
The cathode ray tube was a very difficult thing to produce, | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
many of them failed. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
So... We think of TV as beautiful flat-screen TVs, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
they were very difficult things to be involved in early on. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
But this idea that this medium might not survive, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
or this medium might kill the previous medium, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
we're still living with that. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
As long as I've been involved in television, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
the next thing is going to kill it, the internet's going to kill television, | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
like television was supposed to have killed radio - | 0:12:10 | 0:12:12 | |
it hasn't happened. If you go onto a train now, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
there's people with iPads watching television on the train. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
But in the end, nothing kills anything. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:19 | |
Cinema didn't kill theatre, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
television didn't kill cinema, and so on and so forth. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
-We adapt... -Did it influence you directly, television? | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
I think I'm entirely a product of the television age. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
I became an historian | 0:12:30 | 0:12:31 | |
not because the history lessons at school were absolutely riveting - | 0:12:31 | 0:12:35 | |
it's cos I went home and I watched Timewatch, and I watched | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
Michael Woods, and I watched a generation of TV historians | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
bring the past to life in a way | 0:12:41 | 0:12:43 | |
that I'm afraid my teachers didn't and books didn't. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:45 | |
I chose my profession because of watching it on television | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
-and seeing what it could be. -So, you saw it as an educator? | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
Absolutely. I was brought up in a council estate by the Tyne | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
and I learnt about history, | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
got my desire to become an historian and learnt about art | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
through watching television programmes. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
1986, there was a series called Artists And Models, | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
about French art. | 0:13:05 | 0:13:06 | |
Three years later, I go interrailing and me and my friends, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
we go to the Louvre. Our idea of where to go had been given to us | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
by television. Television gave me an appreciation of art | 0:13:13 | 0:13:15 | |
I wouldn't have had otherwise. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
One of the other things that was interesting about the time | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
was that what we grew up on was cinema, films, | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
and we went, all the time, to the cinema, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
you went out of your home for your entertainment. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
Television brought imagery into the home. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:32 | |
And also exposed you to all sorts of things, | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
didn't matter what it was - we watched westerns, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
we watched reality shows, and we watched variety, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
the cameras in front of vaudeville stages. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
It was very unsophisticated, there was no grammar of television, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
it was all a matter of putting cameras in front of events | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
and letting it happen. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
-It was very crude. -But very communal, you watched it together. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
Someone described television as the greatest of all inventions, | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
cos it allows people who are related to one another to sit in a room | 0:13:57 | 0:14:00 | |
without having a row. I think there's a lot to that. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
Do you remember how snobbish people were, briefly, about television in the beginning? | 0:14:02 | 0:14:06 | |
-How...? -Snobbish people, some people? | 0:14:06 | 0:14:08 | |
-"We never watch television", and so on... -There was a slightly, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
erm, yes, de haut en bas. It's for the populace, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
it's for the masses, cos we rather... | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
We're listening to The Third Programme. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
Thanks to Joan Bakewell and David Olusoga. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
Thank you very much. Television wasn't a free-growing plant. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
From the start, it was those in charge who decided | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
what was fit to be shown on this new medium of mass communication. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:33 | |
News, obviously, entertainment and drama. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:35 | |
Given that this medium was destined to be delivered to a massive | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
proportion of the nation at the same time, and much of it live, | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
then caution was perhaps inevitable. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
Yet from the start, producers wanted to give the whole country | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
a sense of what someone called a smell of itself. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
But did this mean it should be comforting or challenging? | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
Feisty or a nice cup of tea? | 0:14:53 | 0:14:55 | |
The first great audience-grabbing broadcast on British television | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
was the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth II. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:06 | |
CHEERING | 0:15:06 | 0:15:07 | |
For the first time in history, | 0:15:10 | 0:15:11 | |
people from all corners of the nation crowded into small rooms | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
to watch and to feel a part of something | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
far beyond their usual horizons. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:18 | |
What's more, they all saw the same thing, at the same moment. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
It was British TV's first great unifying event. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
And the pageantry of the occasion - even in black and white - | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
reinforced a widespread deference towards our monarch, | 0:15:30 | 0:15:34 | |
which has remained for decades. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
A preoccupation with the monarchy has sustained television producers | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
ever since, so that more than 60 years on, | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
interest in anything royal, from the Tudors... | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
Ha! | 0:15:50 | 0:15:51 | |
..and the Victorians... | 0:15:51 | 0:15:52 | |
God save the Queen! | 0:15:54 | 0:15:56 | |
..to the modern Royal Family, still guarantees big audiences. | 0:15:56 | 0:16:00 | |
A point that was argued at the time of the coronation, | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
when Prince Philip was among the first to understand what TV | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
could do for the royals. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
How close are you proposing that these cameras get? | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
They will be kept at a very discreet distance. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
No close-ups? | 0:16:13 | 0:16:14 | |
Zoom. Lenses. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
Oh, no. It will all be done with the greatest sensitivity and respect. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
Has this obsession with our royal heritage helped keep us together | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
as a nation? | 0:16:28 | 0:16:30 | |
Or is it evidence of British television's reluctance | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
to keep pace with a changing world? | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
For centuries, great British institutions, like this behind me - | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
Westminster Abbey, a place where kings were crowned - | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
were closed to all but the privileged. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
A few Londoners could go in, but the vast majority of people | 0:16:48 | 0:16:51 | |
in this country didn't know what was going on inside that place. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
Now they do, thanks to television. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:57 | |
While these programmes managed to prise open the closed doors | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
of some of the established structures of our country, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
few, if any, managed to shine a really penetrating light | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
into dark corners. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:11 | |
And why should we expect it to have been otherwise? | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
Because, already, three quarters of a million foreign visitors | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
have chosen to come to this country this year for their holidays. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
-Well, what exactly do you want? -In its earliest days, | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
television, like BBC Radio, looked and sounded as though | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
what made it onto the screen | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
was all decided by boys from Eton and Harrow and Oxbridge. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
These television pictures will be relayed across the Channel. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:35 | |
That's because it largely was. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:37 | |
The voices that carried the news and other serious stuff on radio | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
and television were posh, southern and sounded exclusive. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
So now, let's get on with the show. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
# Hark, when the night is falling... # | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
It wasn't until after 1955, when Independent Television launched, | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
that the nations and regions | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
had the chance to air more of their own identity, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
albeit the first forays may have pandered to some stereotypes. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
# High as the spirits of the old Highland men... # | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
You're a copper 24 hours a day.... | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
An apparent reluctance to rock the boat | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
also characterised television's approach to serial drama. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
WHISTLING | 0:18:17 | 0:18:18 | |
-Ah, good evening, all. -Shows like Dixon Of Dock Green | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
reassured us that we were all safe in the hands of an incorruptible | 0:18:21 | 0:18:24 | |
and tolerant police force, | 0:18:24 | 0:18:26 | |
reinforcing our belief in fair play and the triumph of good. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:31 | |
I'll see you again next week. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
Ta-ra. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:34 | |
The bad guys got their comeuppance, the good guys always won. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
It's a comforting view of law and order | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
that's lasted into some crime dramas to this day. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
So that even if the victims may be losing their heads, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
you can be sure that Chief Inspector Barnaby | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
will track down the crucial clues leading to the culprit. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
A shepherd's pie. | 0:18:58 | 0:18:59 | |
I confess, I buried it alive. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:04 | |
It's a world in which disbelief must be suspended. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
It's opening time. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:10 | |
Quite how anyone is left alive in Oxford, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
as the tortured Inspector Morse | 0:19:13 | 0:19:14 | |
blunders around in an alcoholic haze, eludes us. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
But providing he's left vindicated and brooding over a pint of real ale | 0:19:19 | 0:19:22 | |
at the end, we can all sleep soundly in our beds. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
That's not bad, this. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:27 | |
Early television producers also tuned into the audience's interest | 0:19:31 | 0:19:35 | |
in peeping behind the curtains of the newly established | 0:19:35 | 0:19:37 | |
and widely welcomed National Health Service. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
OK, let's have a look at him. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:41 | |
With versions of life in our hospitals or surgeries | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
providing entertainment for millions. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
Dr Finlay, could you come quickly? | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
It's Dougie. He's drank the carbolic! | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
-What did you put on it? -Initially, there was very little of the blood | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
and vomit of the real-life NHS, | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
and very few shortages of staff and money. | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
Five in resus, 15 in majors and 32 moderate... | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
This was, and often remains, a reassuring view of the world | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
as we would like to think it is, rather than how it actually is. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
So, what happened? | 0:20:10 | 0:20:11 | |
Everywhere, there are sympathetic doctors. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
Right. Don't move him, let me have a look at you. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
And nurses who get rather too personally | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
involved for anyone's good. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
You'll get all the information you need there. OK? | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
Stories usually have a happy ending | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
that we can enjoy from the safety of our own homes - | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
and that says something | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
about how we like to think of ourselves as a nation. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
The National Health Service gave her the gift of motherhood. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
She called her child Grace Miracle. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
And she was perfect. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
One of the greatest blessings of television, | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
as far as I'm concerned, is that it brought such fine actors | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
and comedy writers to the screen. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
And they provoked a national, classless conversation of delight. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:04 | |
Like crime and medical drama, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:07 | |
comedy quickly became a defining characteristic of our television, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
showing confidence in who we were. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
Allowing us to laugh at her own absurdity - | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
and sometimes helping to air social concerns. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
-Oh, dear. -Oh, my God! | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, your new vicar. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
Hello! Geraldine. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:29 | |
-Boo! -SHE LAUGHS | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
Arguably, the British reputation across the world | 0:21:33 | 0:21:35 | |
for our national sense of humour derives more or less exclusively | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
from our television and films. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:40 | |
Your name will also go on the list. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
-What is it? -Don't tell him, Pike! -Pike. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
Continually on the lookout for aspects of life | 0:21:52 | 0:21:54 | |
which would unite us and translate into big audiences, | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
early TV producers spotted our national affection for our history. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:02 | |
Which resulted in an often sentimental | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
and nostalgic view of the past. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:06 | |
So, costume drama found a place early on in the schedules. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
And has continued to do so with some of the biggest hits in recent years | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
being remakes of old favourites with a few added twists. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
Silence in court. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:23 | |
Now we come, not for the first time, to Jarndyce and Jarndyce. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
We were told that the nation's female hearts | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
all missed a simultaneous beat when Colin Firth emerged | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
from the lake as Darcy in a wet shirt. | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
Mr Darcy! | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
And we're told they missed several beats when Aidan Turner | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
did actually take off his shirt in Poldark. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
As he scythed, someone said, the nation sighed. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
Much of our most popular costume drama has focused on class. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:02 | |
And again, often presenting a rosy view of the past. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
-It's five minutes to 11, sir. -Oh, thank you, Hudson... | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
An early favourite was Upstairs Downstairs, | 0:23:12 | 0:23:14 | |
in which the gentlefolk above ground | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
were largely benevolent - | 0:23:16 | 0:23:18 | |
and the servants below were largely hard-working and honest. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:22 | |
That's gone into the coal. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
But most important of all, everyone knew their place. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
-BELL RINGS -That must be the morning room. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:29 | |
40 years later, the identical themes underpinned | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
one of the most popular dramas of the age. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:42 | |
Are there still forbidden subjects in 1920? | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
I can't believe this. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:47 | |
I agree with Mama. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:50 | |
Some subjects are not suitable for every ear. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:53 | |
Mm. Pas devant les domestiques? | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
Come on, my dear. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
Carson and Alfred know more about life than we ever will. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
With all the modern talk of a fast-changing, | 0:24:06 | 0:24:08 | |
ethnically mixed Britain, | 0:24:08 | 0:24:10 | |
a nostalgic look at the British class system | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
still has the power to produce huge audiences. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 | |
You know, the way to deal with the world today is not to ignore it. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:21 | |
If you do, you'll just get hurt. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
Sometimes, I feel like a creature in the wilds whose natural habitat | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
is gradually being destroyed. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:29 | |
Later, we'll look at the various ways that television | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
has challenged what some thought was our self-confidence | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
and others our complacency. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:45 | |
But I wonder whether it was inevitable from those earliest days | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
that teams around which we could all unite would dominate the schedules. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
Alongside Joan Bakewell, I'm joined by Michael Grade - | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
who's enjoyed a long and distinguished career in television, | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
with top jobs at the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 - | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
and Anthony Horowitz - creator of Foyle's War, | 0:25:00 | 0:25:02 | |
and writer of some of television's most popular drama, | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
including Midsomer Murders and Poirot. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
Michael, why do you think that we dipped in a nostalgia so early | 0:25:07 | 0:25:12 | |
and have held onto it so tenaciously? | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
Great stories. It's storytelling, that's all it is. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:16 | |
It's what Anthony does so brilliantly, | 0:25:16 | 0:25:18 | |
and that's what our literary heritage | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
that we borrow from in modern series, but essentially, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
it's just great stories, and TV can bring great stories, | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
and people never tire of great stories. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
Anthony, you've tapped into the past in drama. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
-What takes you there? -Takes me back? -Mm. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:37 | |
I think I like dramatizing history because it gives me | 0:25:37 | 0:25:41 | |
a sort of certainty. I know exactly what was going on there. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
If I try and write about where we are now, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:45 | |
people will argue with me and say, no, it's not like that at all. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
But I think we do have an idea of sort of Second World War, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
for example, or the villages where Midsomer Murders is set, | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
but it's sort of very much in our national psyche and it's a certainty | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
-about it which I like. -Is the certainty beguiling? | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
Do you think the certainty works because it works with you, | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
or the certainty's there because it really was like that? | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
No, it wasn't like that at all. Of course not. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:09 | |
-That's the joy of it. -LAUGHTER | 0:26:09 | 0:26:10 | |
You're dealing with a sort of a myth here. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
I mean, Midsomer never existed. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
Old ladies on tricycles going around the place, | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
thatched cottages and the sun always shining. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
I mean, that doesn't exist, but it is somehow in our minds - | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
just like the Second World War, of course, and the Home Front - | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
the stiff upper lip, that this is how it was. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
It's how we've been sort of programmed ourselves. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
And why do you think, | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
given that you say more or less this is a fiction based on a fact, | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
why do you think it plays so well? | 0:26:35 | 0:26:36 | |
Because it's comforting, or because we want to have been like that? | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
I would say it's because modern life is increasingly less comforting, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
because we're now so uncertain of where we are. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
Look at America with Trump, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
look at Brexit, look at everything around us. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
Look at the way 24-hour news now throws us from side to side. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
We don't know where we are any more, | 0:26:52 | 0:26:53 | |
so we can turn on the television and find certainty. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
Joan, Joan Bakewell, did television, in the early days, | 0:26:57 | 0:27:02 | |
feel like a club run by men for other men? | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
Yes, because it primarily was. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:08 | |
I mean, there were some outstanding women. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:10 | |
Grace Wyndham Goldie was very famous for leading a department, | 0:27:10 | 0:27:13 | |
but it was assumed that women wouldn't get the jobs | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
unless they made a special effort. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:19 | |
So, they weren't on the screen. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:21 | |
The stories, on the whole, reinforced the place of women. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
The women were the nurses, the men were the doctors. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
There were women's programmes, to which I contributed, | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
which were done in the afternoon, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
because that's when women would be watching television, | 0:27:32 | 0:27:34 | |
cos they didn't have jobs. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:35 | |
I did a programme called Home At 4.30, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
which was full of knitting and recipes... | 0:27:38 | 0:27:40 | |
LAUGHTER Did you do that? | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
Yes, and some of those programmes were actually presented by men, | 0:27:43 | 0:27:46 | |
but with adjacent women in inferior roles. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
So, the whole role of women was very clearly demarcated, | 0:27:49 | 0:27:53 | |
both in the reality, in the fictional programmes, | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
and in the real programmes. Also, something else, | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
it comes out of the selection you've just had there, | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
it's the importance of the church. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
The church was very important. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
There was something called The God Slot, which obliged every television | 0:28:06 | 0:28:10 | |
channel to stop doing entertainment between 6.15 and 7.45 | 0:28:10 | 0:28:16 | |
so that people would not be persuaded not to go to church. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
We were a churchgoing country | 0:28:20 | 0:28:22 | |
and the idea that television would seduce | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
people away from that was seen as a social responsibility. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
So you had to do serious, worthy programmes on Sunday evenings. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
And now and then somebody would pop up which said, "Please mention God"? | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
Well... That happened in my programme, I'm afraid. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:36 | |
Because we didn't really want to do programmes about God, | 0:28:36 | 0:28:40 | |
we did social issues and their moral content, | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
and we tried to bring God in, and on one occasion forgot, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
and someone rushed in with a notice board saying, "Mention God." | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:28:50 | 0:28:51 | |
Michael, one of the things that happened | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
was the scooping up of people, | 0:28:56 | 0:28:58 | |
great entertainers from the seaside resorts - | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
we've seen Morecambe and Wise - bringing them in, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:03 | |
and it must have had a terrific impact on them, because they | 0:29:03 | 0:29:06 | |
were using in a night material that would've lasted them | 0:29:06 | 0:29:09 | |
-for a year or two. -Well, that's absolutely true, | 0:29:09 | 0:29:11 | |
and a lot of them fell by the wayside. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:13 | |
They couldn't make the transition. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
Very, very few great musical hall variety performers | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
made the transition. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
Frankie Howard, Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise, Des O'Connor, | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
Harry Worth, a blessed memory. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:27 | |
Not many of them... Bruce Forsyth, of course, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
but there are hundreds more who couldn't make the transition. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:34 | |
They had their five minutes that they could do at Hackney Empire - | 0:29:34 | 0:29:39 | |
and that was all they had, was those five minutes. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
It took Eric and Ernie a long time to learn how to use the medium, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
-how to use cameras. -So then what happened? | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
Did comedians start to work for television through television? | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
Yes. There were shows like Sunday Night At The Palladium, | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
which was a ground-breaking show, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
which moved variety on television | 0:29:57 | 0:30:00 | |
from very patrician - Cafe Continental, | 0:30:00 | 0:30:03 | |
which was a Saturday night BBC entertainment, pre-ITV - | 0:30:03 | 0:30:08 | |
which consisted of an audience in white tie and tails and the women in | 0:30:08 | 0:30:12 | |
long gowns and gloves, sitting, sipping pseudo cocktails | 0:30:12 | 0:30:16 | |
and very "refeened" variety acts would come on and do some | 0:30:16 | 0:30:21 | |
very "refeened" stuff. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:23 | |
Sunday Night At The Palladium | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
changed that overnight and made huge stars out of many, many people. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:30 | |
Anthony, you've written so much, and been so successful - | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
can I just go back to this idea of presenting a view of this | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
country that some people think is idealised? | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
Can you develop that a bit? | 0:30:40 | 0:30:41 | |
Well, I don't set out to do that. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
I know you don't. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:45 | |
In a show like Foyle's War, for example, | 0:30:45 | 0:30:47 | |
a lot of what we wrote about in Foyle's War was really much the sort | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
of, the dark side of the Home Front in the Second World War. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:52 | |
Treason and anti-Semitism, and cowardice. | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
These were the sort of subjects that we tackled. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
But first of all, because it was period, because it's old cars, | 0:30:58 | 0:31:02 | |
and it's old hats, and it's the throb of the Spitfire, | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
and it's all that stuff, | 0:31:05 | 0:31:06 | |
it comes with a sort of added warmth, which you can't really escape. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:10 | |
So people take away from the show this very warm, | 0:31:10 | 0:31:12 | |
benign view of the world you're presenting. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:15 | |
So it's in-built, rather than done by design. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:19 | |
Do you think that, finally, | 0:31:19 | 0:31:21 | |
do you think there was a sense that this is what the people who are | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
running television wanted to happen? | 0:31:24 | 0:31:26 | |
Well, who are the people running television? | 0:31:26 | 0:31:28 | |
I mean, I wrote Foyle the way I wanted to write it - | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
nobody told me what to do. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
I'm very pleased to hear it, thank you very much. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:35 | |
Thanks to Joan Bakewell, Michael Grade, and Anthony Horowitz. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:39 | |
From the beginning, television has undoubtedly played its part in | 0:31:39 | 0:31:43 | |
reinforcing our own self-image of being fair-minded, patriotic, | 0:31:43 | 0:31:47 | |
and compassionate, with an appetite for nostalgia and a very particular | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
sense of humour. But our television is has also had an honourable tradition | 0:31:50 | 0:31:54 | |
of jolting us out of our comfort zone by showing a slice of what producers | 0:31:54 | 0:31:58 | |
would claim was more real British life. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:00 | |
The problem was to find a family prepared to tolerate the intrusion, | 0:32:01 | 0:32:05 | |
by a film crew, into their every private moment. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
We carried out many interviews and, finally, | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
one family emerged that we hope can meet the demands of this documentary | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
serial. The Wilkins, of Reading. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:15 | |
In 1974, a young producer, Paul Watson, | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
transformed British TV documentary by holding a mirror to the realities | 0:32:20 | 0:32:24 | |
of everyday working-class life in The Family, | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
providing an intimate view of the Wilkins family from Reading, | 0:32:27 | 0:32:31 | |
warts and all. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:32 | |
I mean, you see all these kitchen sink dramas, beautiful | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
kitchens, nothing out of place. | 0:32:35 | 0:32:39 | |
No dirty pans and what have you. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:41 | |
All sparkling. Well, people's kitchens aren't like that. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
These were not the sort of people who had been seen on television before. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:50 | |
And the harsh and crowded reality of their lives, and millions like them, | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
were a revelation to television viewers. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
-Bullshit! -I've already burnt the bloody sausages, haven't I? | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
INDISTINCT SINGING | 0:33:00 | 0:33:01 | |
-What? -Stop making faces! | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
Oh, bloody Nora, Mother! | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
It's hard to credit today, | 0:33:09 | 0:33:10 | |
but 1970s audiences were shocked | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
by any use of bad language and swearing, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
and the thwarting of social convention. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:17 | |
Television had opened a window onto everyday reality, | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
and the domestic and social problems of ordinary people. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
"..due to the fact that sleeping accommodation is for us two, | 0:33:25 | 0:33:29 | |
"and the baby, is situated in the one room..." | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
And if our TV documentary was taking us from a consoling Pathe News view | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
of the world, to the more accurate reality of life | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
as it was lived by most people, our TV drama was already doing the same. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:42 | |
Launched in 1964, | 0:33:44 | 0:33:45 | |
BBC Television's The Wednesday Play gave a voice to the working class... | 0:33:45 | 0:33:50 | |
Dirty sod, I hope your guts drop out! | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
..and made people face up to difficult truths. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
Can you leave it this week? Only I'm a bit short. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
Come on, love, you've £8 owing. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:01 | |
You'd better let me have ten bob. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:02 | |
Yeah, but my old man didn't give me very much this week. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
Branded by Mary Whitehouse as a platform for | 0:34:05 | 0:34:09 | |
dirt, doubt and disbelief, | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
it both reflected and challenged contemporary Britain. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
You're not having my kids! | 0:34:13 | 0:34:15 | |
You're not having my kids! | 0:34:15 | 0:34:16 | |
Ken Loach brilliantly used documentary techniques within drama | 0:34:16 | 0:34:20 | |
to highlight homelessness in Cathy Come Home, | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
and backstreet abortions in Up The Junction. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
We're all done, love. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:30 | |
The tradition continued with directors like Alan Clark, | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
who seized the chance to push the boundaries with films like Scum - | 0:34:34 | 0:34:38 | |
his depiction of life in a brutal borstal. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
Right, you bastard! | 0:34:42 | 0:34:44 | |
I'm the daddy now. Next time, I'll fucking kill you. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
While Alan Bleasdale's 1982 Boys From The Black Stuff | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
captured the public mood as rising unemployment gave way to despair. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
Go on, give us a job. Go on, give us a go! | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
That's been waiting for you half an hour. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:03 | |
And it wasn't just one-off drama that broadened the horizons of | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
the television-viewing public. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:08 | |
-Well! -I'm very sorry, love. | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
In 1960, Granada transformed the TV landscape with the launch of what | 0:35:11 | 0:35:15 | |
was to become Britain's longest-running TV soap, Coronation Street. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
..place looking like a pigsty. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:21 | |
Confident, unselfconscious, and unashamedly working class, | 0:35:21 | 0:35:25 | |
it was embraced by the whole country. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
It's coming to something when father and son fall out. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
Oh, I was just talking about that to Mr Swindley - | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
he says it will be very dangerous, | 0:35:32 | 0:35:34 | |
that fallout from the big bombs the Russians keep letting off. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
Mr Swindley says it will be quite drastic. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
While the north had often been treated to life in the south, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
it was, for many southerners, their first glimpse of life in the north. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
What do you think of that? Are you listening to this? I want you as witnesses after this. | 0:35:47 | 0:35:51 | |
And they took to it, in unequalled millions. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:53 | |
-All right, Mum? -You're up, are you? -Hello, lad. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:56 | |
We'll never eat this amount of stuff every week, Sheila. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:58 | |
We don't, the kids do. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:00 | |
Especially Gareth over there. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:01 | |
A torrent of northern drama followed, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:06 | |
bringing a clear identity | 0:36:06 | 0:36:07 | |
for a part of the country that had previously | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
been little known or understood. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
And with an increased appetite for dramas about real life, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
soap operas became an arena in which important social issues could be explored. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:22 | |
I'll ring you lunchtime, OK? | 0:36:22 | 0:36:25 | |
This kiss between two gay characters in EastEnders was considered so | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
controversial that it provoked questions in Parliament in 1987. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
And in 1994, Brookside showed the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:38 | |
With their huge audiences, soaps have continued to be an important | 0:36:40 | 0:36:44 | |
platform for addressing contemporary issues. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:47 | |
Is this enough? | 0:36:47 | 0:36:49 | |
You'll get yourself killed! | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
I'm fine. I'm fine. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
-Just wait. -No, no, I can't. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
I have to go. I have to go. | 0:36:57 | 0:36:58 | |
I'll miss my... | 0:37:00 | 0:37:01 | |
..bus. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:06 | |
But arguably, while British television has been commendable in many areas, | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
it's been sluggardly in others, | 0:37:10 | 0:37:12 | |
not least in the role it ascribed to women. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
What's this, Mrs Sharples? | 0:37:15 | 0:37:16 | |
What do you think it is? A birthday card? | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
-It's your notice. -While soap operas developed a tradition of presenting | 0:37:18 | 0:37:21 | |
strong female characters | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
like Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street... | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
You get off of me! | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
..and Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders... | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
-You bitch! -You cow! | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
..women were often trapped in cliched roles | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
and portrayed as dolly birds or housewives, or both. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:38 | |
The fact remains that you were wearing a 36D cup in Junior School, | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
weren't you? | 0:37:42 | 0:37:43 | |
That's not my fault. That's nature. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:45 | |
All right, put 'em away. Put 'em away. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
He was laughing and joking when he came in. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
Said to be in the club tonight. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:52 | |
Perhaps that was why, in 1991, | 0:37:52 | 0:37:55 | |
Prime Suspect's DCI Jane Tennison had such an impact. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
Look, I am the only officer of my rank who was continuously overstepped, | 0:37:59 | 0:38:03 | |
sidestepped, whatever. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:05 | |
Just give me the chance to prove that I can... | 0:38:05 | 0:38:07 | |
You don't have to prove yourself to me. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
Here was a strong, self-reliant woman, | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
complete with the flaws that had marked her male TV counterparts. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:16 | |
Taking the lead in a man's world, | 0:38:16 | 0:38:18 | |
and paving the way for others like her. | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
I'm Catherine, by the way, I'm 47. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:23 | |
I'm divorced, I live with my sister who is a recovering heroin addict. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:27 | |
I've two grown-up children, one dead, one I don't speak to, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
and a grandson, so... | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
Keep dancing! | 0:38:32 | 0:38:33 | |
However, it remains very much a man's world | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
in other areas of television | 0:38:35 | 0:38:36 | |
where older women are noticeably absent. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
A 2013 report revealed that just one in 20 of the presenters | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
on our screen are women over 50. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
These columns speak of authority. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:49 | |
And when an older woman with first-rate credentials and presenting skills | 0:38:49 | 0:38:52 | |
does appear, it's her age and looks that make the headlines. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:56 | |
If there's just one Roman that | 0:38:56 | 0:38:57 | |
everyone knows, it's Julius Caesar. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
And from those famous last words - | 0:39:01 | 0:39:03 | |
"Et tu, Brute," | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
which he definitely didn't say... | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
Anyway, I was wondering... | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
British television has been slow to represent disability. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:13 | |
TV's first regular disabled soap part only came about because the | 0:39:13 | 0:39:17 | |
able-bodied actor who played Sandy Richardson had an illness that rendered him immobile. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:21 | |
The producer wrote his disability into the story. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:25 | |
I'll have a word with Mr McPhee. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:27 | |
-Hello, Sandy. -Hi. Thanks very much. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:29 | |
And then there's the changing racial and ethnic mix of the country - | 0:39:31 | 0:39:34 | |
an area in which TV has also been shockingly slow | 0:39:34 | 0:39:38 | |
to reflect real life. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:39 | |
In 1968, Barbara Blake Hannah became the first black news reporter on | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
British TV. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:46 | |
Are you willing to rewrite... | 0:39:46 | 0:39:47 | |
But her career was short-lived. | 0:39:47 | 0:39:49 | |
Her first contract was terminated after just nine months, | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
in response to daily complaints from viewers. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
But while 1960s viewers found it difficult to cope | 0:39:59 | 0:40:01 | |
with a black presenter, they'd no problem with blacked-up faces, | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
in one of the most popular shows of the time - | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
The Black And White Minstrel Show. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:10 | |
# Chariots a-swinging... # | 0:40:10 | 0:40:15 | |
It was only finally taken off the air in 1978. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
You said he was born in Manchester. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
-Yeah. -Well, he ain't a proper blackie, then, is he? | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
Early attempts to reflect an increasingly diverse population | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
were often through comedy, where sometimes | 0:40:29 | 0:40:32 | |
it was unclear whether the programmes were reinforcing | 0:40:32 | 0:40:35 | |
prejudice or mocking it. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:36 | |
I mean, the ones I'm talking about, they are your proper blacks, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
ain't they? The ones that was born in the jungle. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:41 | |
I love English food. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:43 | |
Get off, you just fancy the waiters, innit, huh? | 0:40:43 | 0:40:46 | |
It was only in the 1990s, | 0:40:46 | 0:40:48 | |
when producers turned to black and Asian writers | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
that viewers were offered | 0:40:50 | 0:40:51 | |
a different perspective with shows like, Goodness, Gracious Me!... | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
It wouldn't be Friday night if we didn't go for an English. | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
..and The Kumars At Number 42, | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
brilliantly skewing British behaviour | 0:41:01 | 0:41:03 | |
by flipping it on its head. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:04 | |
So, boys... | 0:41:06 | 0:41:08 | |
Let's talk football. | 0:41:08 | 0:41:10 | |
-I... -I hear about the wet look. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
Alongside comedy, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:16 | |
the 1990s saw a handful of sitcoms featuring non-white casts. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:20 | |
But progress has been slow. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:23 | |
And today it's noticeable how many shows still resort | 0:41:23 | 0:41:26 | |
to crude stereotypes. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:27 | |
Walk away, disrespect me, Errol. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
Just last year, the BBC's Undercover | 0:41:34 | 0:41:37 | |
was hailed by some as a milestone when Sophie Okenedo | 0:41:37 | 0:41:39 | |
and Adrian Lester were cast in a show where the colour of | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
their skin wasn't central to the plot. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
Here was a middle-class black family whose identity was not just defined | 0:41:46 | 0:41:50 | |
by their race. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
Now, nobody's saying Chatsworth estate is the Garden of Eden. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:58 | |
But it's been a good home to us. To me. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
While British TV has been slow to reflect social change in many | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
areas, there've also been successful attempts to inject more realism into | 0:42:03 | 0:42:08 | |
the schedules. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
The comfortable crime and medical dramas that had been a staple | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
since the earliest days of television | 0:42:13 | 0:42:15 | |
have been brought sharply up-to-date, | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
in shows like Jed Mercurio's Line Of Duty - | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
the antithesis of the cosy escapist cop show... | 0:42:20 | 0:42:22 | |
No! | 0:42:24 | 0:42:25 | |
..and Bodies, an unflinching view of a disintegrating NHS. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:30 | |
Something went wrong, didn't it? | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
In the operation? | 0:42:34 | 0:42:35 | |
-Sometimes things go wrong. -But while programmes like these undoubtedly do | 0:42:38 | 0:42:43 | |
their best to challenge complacency and reflect a changing Britain, | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
we live in an age where there is a proliferation of channels, | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
many of which are dominated by fly-on-the-wall shows | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
and a different kind of reality. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
These may attempt to show who we are... | 0:42:57 | 0:42:58 | |
James Turner Street was one of the best streets. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:03 | |
Unemployed, unemployed. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
Now, one of the worst. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
..but do they really? | 0:43:08 | 0:43:10 | |
Unemployed. Unemployed. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:12 | |
Or is reality, in fact, one big misnomer, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
and is our TV, for the most part, failing to reflect, in any meaningful way, who we've become? | 0:43:15 | 0:43:20 | |
That's just a scan of 60 years of television's attempts to engage with | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
a changing Britain. But how successfully has it managed the balance the cosy | 0:43:27 | 0:43:31 | |
with the more radical agenda? | 0:43:31 | 0:43:32 | |
Joining me to discuss this, one of our foremost film-makers, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:36 | |
responsible for some of television's most ground-breaking drama, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
Ken Loach, writer, broadcaster, and former politician Trevor Phillips, | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
and multi-award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
whose television credits include Birdsong, The Hour, and most recently, River. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:50 | |
Ken, in the 1960s you made films showing a side of Britain which had | 0:43:50 | 0:43:55 | |
rarely been seen before. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:57 | |
When you made them, were you aware of the power that these films could | 0:43:57 | 0:44:00 | |
-have? -We were aware of the power of television, I think. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
And I think we knew we were on to something. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
And we were at a point when drama was moving out of the studio, | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
onto the streets. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:13 | |
So all that came together to tell contemporary stories. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:17 | |
But I think it was a time when the ruling class was very confident, | 0:44:17 | 0:44:22 | |
so they felt able to let these stories be told. | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
When the ruling class is not confident, then the noose tightens. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:31 | |
You see that in wartime, you see it when there's industrial unrest. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:36 | |
And you see it very much now, when society is fractured, | 0:44:36 | 0:44:42 | |
and in conflict. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
So when you did Cathy Come Home and Up The Junction and so on, | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
was there much opposition? | 0:44:47 | 0:44:48 | |
Did you and Tony Garnett say, we want to do this? | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
Well, Garnett was one heck of an operator, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:54 | |
but, even so, you got it through on your own terms? | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
Yes. The critical figure was Sydney Newman, who was head of drama, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
and he gave us the go-ahead to do contemporary fiction after the news. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:08 | |
And we tried to make it | 0:45:08 | 0:45:09 | |
indistinguishable from the news, in a way. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:13 | |
In that people would use the same critical faculties they used on the news for the drama. | 0:45:13 | 0:45:17 | |
And we got into trouble because people said they couldn't | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
tell if it was fact or fiction. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:23 | |
And we said, precisely. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:24 | |
But, in fact, if Sydney said it was OK, it was OK. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:30 | |
I think the difficulty now is there are so many checks and balances | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
all the way up, and so much micromanagement, | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
that I don't think we could make those programmes now. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:41 | |
We now look back on these as great successes | 0:45:41 | 0:45:43 | |
but, at the time, was there a lot of resistance, outrage, | 0:45:43 | 0:45:46 | |
outcry about them? | 0:45:46 | 0:45:47 | |
Um...yes. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
But from... | 0:45:51 | 0:45:53 | |
But it was fraudulent. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:55 | |
We did a series called Days Of Hope, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
which was about the labour movement's | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
struggle from the First World War to the General Strike, | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
and somebody in one of the right-wing papers said, | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
"We can't believe a word in this film, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:07 | |
"because the soldiers are marching in fours not threes." | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
At the same time, there was a programme - or round about the same time - | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
there was a programme about Churchill called The Young Churchill which was hagiography - | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
it was flattering beyond words. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
There was no mention that that was confusing fact and fiction. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
That was fine. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:25 | |
And I think what is central to this discussion - | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
I don't know if you'd agree - is that broadcasting is an arm of the state. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
It is controlled by politicians. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
And, of course, it will conflict with governments. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:39 | |
But the central tenets of the state are not challenged - | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
hierarchy, monarchy, established religion, | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
freedom equals the freedom of the market. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
And so you don't see... What you don't see - it's very interesting - | 0:46:50 | 0:46:54 | |
what you don't see there is the ruling class | 0:46:54 | 0:46:56 | |
being given a dose of social realism. | 0:46:56 | 0:46:58 | |
If we started on that, we're here all night. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
That wouldn't be a bad idea, to be here all night, but we've got to ask about the women here. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:05 | |
You... Prime Suspect meant a lot to you, didn't it? | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
Yeah, I mean, you know, seeing a show, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
and certainly a cop show at that time | 0:47:12 | 0:47:14 | |
led by a woman, and a woman like, | 0:47:14 | 0:47:16 | |
you know, Jane Tennison, was kind of extraordinary, | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
because she was flawed. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:20 | |
She was complex. She was addressing the issue in the room. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
I think it was very exciting, also, to see a workplace drama where she | 0:47:23 | 0:47:25 | |
was driving the story and the narrative. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
Do you feel, even now - do you still feel that women are | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
underrepresented in many different areas and ways in television? | 0:47:31 | 0:47:34 | |
I think, statistically, they are. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:36 | |
Yes, basically. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
I think what really is interesting is about the female ensembles on TV. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
We see male ensembles again and again, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:43 | |
but the reason why I'm interested in female ensembles - | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
so I would look at shows like Band Of Gold, you know, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
and certainly Sally Wainwright's work, where you see someone like Scott & Bailey, | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
which is a group of women working together - | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
is that for me, it's exciting not only on a political level, | 0:47:55 | 0:47:58 | |
but on a professional level, because you're bringing up the next generation of female actors as well. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:02 | |
So that's what I like to see. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:03 | |
We've see movies again and again, you know, cop shows, | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
where there are five or six men in the room. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:09 | |
That's also about employment of actors for me, so, for me, | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
television is a political means to tell a very strong political story, | 0:48:12 | 0:48:15 | |
but it's also, actually, in the very act of its making, a political act. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
So that's why I get excited about writing for women. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
Do you think there's been much progress in the... | 0:48:22 | 0:48:24 | |
What did the statistics show - you must know - | 0:48:24 | 0:48:26 | |
about women representation on television? | 0:48:26 | 0:48:29 | |
Geena Davis is very interesting, | 0:48:29 | 0:48:30 | |
in terms of her research that she's done for her | 0:48:30 | 0:48:36 | |
media centre for equality in the media. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
She talks about the magic 17%. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
Certainly, in relation to US television | 0:48:41 | 0:48:43 | |
it's this magic 17% where they | 0:48:43 | 0:48:45 | |
looked at 17% of jobs across the board, | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
and specifically they started to look at background artists in shows. | 0:48:48 | 0:48:52 | |
And they found that 17% of background artists, on the whole, are women. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
So that's a huge statistical difference, and so, | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
you start to realise that, subliminally, you're saying things all the time, | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
with how you present women on the screen. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:03 | |
And certainly, we know statistics for directors and writers, | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
which are still extraordinarily low. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:08 | |
Trevor, Trevor Phillips, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:10 | |
how has television kept pace with the diversity in our society? | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
I think the big change from some of the earlier stuff we saw is, | 0:49:14 | 0:49:19 | |
ironically, in television, about visibility. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
When I was a kid, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:23 | |
if ever there was a black person on television, | 0:49:23 | 0:49:26 | |
somebody who was downstairs would shout upstairs, "Auntie, there's a black man on television!" | 0:49:26 | 0:49:33 | |
And somebody would run down the street and say, black man! | 0:49:33 | 0:49:35 | |
By the time everybody got to the television, | 0:49:35 | 0:49:37 | |
he'd gone because he was only there for 15 seconds, | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
but I think what is different now is that there isn't the same level | 0:49:40 | 0:49:45 | |
kind of invisibility. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:46 | |
And by the way, you know, the symbolic kiss that you referred to - | 0:49:46 | 0:49:50 | |
bear in mind the first one that really caused a storm was the interracial kiss | 0:49:50 | 0:49:55 | |
in Emergency Ward Ten, | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
which was one of the dominant soaps of the 1960s. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
So I think what is different now is that kind of invisibility has | 0:50:01 | 0:50:08 | |
lessened in some way. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:11 | |
That doesn't necessarily mean that what we have now is in some way | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
a representation of the nation as it really is | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
because I think if you think about minority communities - I think it's also true about women - | 0:50:18 | 0:50:23 | |
the picture we see of those groups of people is a picture that is viewed, | 0:50:23 | 0:50:28 | |
frankly, largely from the eyes of a white, middle-class decision maker. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:35 | |
So the people are there, | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
but only in a way that is seen by people | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
who aren't men or minorities. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:42 | |
You said that you think that the most optimistic, heartening representation | 0:50:42 | 0:50:47 | |
of diversity on television is in Big Brother and The Apprentice. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:51 | |
Well, this point about visibility. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
You used the phrase, actually, in the package, | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
of television being a window. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
Most people in this country do not know a person of a different colour | 0:51:00 | 0:51:06 | |
well enough to have ever been in their house. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
That's just statistically the case. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
The way in which they will have seen what somebody like me behaves like | 0:51:11 | 0:51:16 | |
at home will be through Wife Swap or in Big Brother. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
The first time and only time they'll have seen somebody or come close to | 0:51:20 | 0:51:24 | |
somebody who's transgender is in Big Brother. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
So these are opportunities to provide a window into different people's lives. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:33 | |
Can I go round the table very quickly? | 0:51:33 | 0:51:35 | |
Do you think television is changing to becoming more radical now, | 0:51:35 | 0:51:39 | |
or less, Ken? | 0:51:39 | 0:51:41 | |
I think it's changing to be more compliant, much less radical. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:46 | |
Trevor? | 0:51:46 | 0:51:47 | |
No, I don't think so, but I do think that it is still rather blind. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:52 | |
We don't see working-class social conservatives on TV. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:56 | |
When we see Luther - nobody's more sexy than Idris Elba - | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
but he's got no black friends or family. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
I mean, that's the view of somebody who's not like him. | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
So, although there are more different kinds of people on the box, | 0:52:05 | 0:52:09 | |
they aren't really like themselves still. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:11 | |
And Abi? | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
I'm kind of a believer in see it to be it, so actually, | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
I think it's a kind of balance between, I agree, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
we still need to see more advances, but I think we're also at an age | 0:52:18 | 0:52:20 | |
where there is so much television being | 0:52:20 | 0:52:22 | |
made at the moment that I think it's being very conscious in the way we | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
make it and how we present it. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
So, I think there's room to go. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
Well, thank you all very much indeed. | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
Thanks to Ken Loach, Abi Morgan and Trevor Phillips. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
From its earliest days, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:37 | |
television recognised and took seriously its role as a tribune of | 0:52:37 | 0:52:40 | |
the people, even if its style of doing so at first would be scarcely | 0:52:40 | 0:52:43 | |
recognisable today. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:45 | |
Good morning, Mr Attlee. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:46 | |
We hope you had a good journey. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:48 | |
-Yes, excellent. -Can you - now you're back, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
having cut short your lecture tour - | 0:52:51 | 0:52:53 | |
tell us something of how you view the election prospects? | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
It's going to be a good fight. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:58 | |
A very good chance of winning. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
Anything else you'd care to say about the coming election? | 0:53:02 | 0:53:05 | |
No. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:06 | |
While early interviewers treated our politicians with great deference, | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
as television gained confidence, | 0:53:12 | 0:53:13 | |
it began to establish itself as something of a scourge. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
Journalists like Bernard Levin | 0:53:19 | 0:53:20 | |
introduced some of the irreverence for which he'd become known in the press. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:24 | |
I'm talking about things that morality. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
-All right. -That's what you want to impose. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
That's one thing that cannot be done by statute. | 0:53:28 | 0:53:30 | |
-I don't suppose you ever read things like this? -Yes, indeed I do, Sir Cyril. Yes, indeed. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:35 | |
-Could you tell me what it is? -It's the criminal statistics. The annual one. -When was it published? | 0:53:35 | 0:53:38 | |
-It's published every year. -When? -Now, please stop this silliness. | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
If you want to make a silly point out of that, make it. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
And a new generation of interviewers was unafraid to confront senior | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
-politicians. -You say it's typical. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
-Yes, I do. -You see you keep using words like typical as though there's | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
millions of piles of excrement dropping through letterboxes | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
up and down our green and pleasant land, to use your own phrase, | 0:53:58 | 0:54:00 | |
and that's not happening. And it's not typical. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
So Mr Pym and Mr Pryor and Mr Whitelaw and Mr Walker | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
-are not necessarily going to go? -You are going further than I wish to go. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:12 | |
Well, naturally. That's part of my job, Prime Minister. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
Television has helped massively to introduce democracy to our system. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
Not least because we see the people, we can challenge them, | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
and they are challenged on television by good interviewers. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:24 | |
I have accounted for my decision to dismiss Derek Lewis... | 0:54:24 | 0:54:29 | |
Did you threaten to overrule him? | 0:54:29 | 0:54:31 | |
..in great detail before the House of Commons. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:33 | |
I'm going to be frightfully rude. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:35 | |
I'm sorry. It's a straight yes or no. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:38 | |
-You can put the question and I will give you an answer. -It's a straight yes or no answer. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:42 | |
Did you threaten to overrule him? | 0:54:42 | 0:54:43 | |
And more than that, when we see them, we see their faces, | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
we can tell, I think, whether they're lying or not. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
Television is a very good lie detector and, as we know, | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
most of the information we get about people is from this | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
and television fits this quite well. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
If it now falls to me to start a fight, | 0:54:58 | 0:55:01 | |
to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country | 0:55:01 | 0:55:05 | |
with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of traditional British fair play, so be it. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:12 | |
Jonathan Aitken accused the media of lying but was subsequently found to | 0:55:12 | 0:55:17 | |
have lied himself. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:18 | |
He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for perjury. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
And it's not just professional interviewers | 0:55:23 | 0:55:25 | |
who have been able to put our politicians through their paces. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
TV has also offered members of the public the occasional chance to | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
confront those in power. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:34 | |
When the Belgrano was sunk, it was a danger to our ships. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:38 | |
Mrs Thatcher, I am saying that nobody with any imagination can put | 0:55:38 | 0:55:44 | |
it sailing other than away from the Falklands. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
Mrs Gould, when the orders were given to sink it and when it was sunk, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:51 | |
it was in an area which was a danger to our ships. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:55 | |
Now, you accept that, do you? | 0:55:55 | 0:55:57 | |
-No, I don't. -Well, I'm sorry. | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
I think it could only be in Britain that a Prime Minister was accused of | 0:56:00 | 0:56:06 | |
sinking an enemy ship that was a danger to our Navy. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:09 | |
And our TV has ruffled the feathers of those in authority outside the | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
studio too. Television drama has a long and honourable tradition of | 0:56:18 | 0:56:23 | |
giving those in power sleepless nights. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
In 1965, | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
Peter Watkins' The War Game looked at what life would really be like in | 0:56:29 | 0:56:33 | |
the event of a nuclear attack. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:35 | |
When the carbon monoxide content of inhaled air exceeds 1.28%, | 0:56:36 | 0:56:42 | |
it will be followed by death within three minutes. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
This is nuclear war. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:50 | |
It was a step too far for the Government of the day, when the threat seemed | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
very real, and the film didn't actually air until 20 years later. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
Jesus, this place has been totally blown away. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:06 | |
Clever writers and directors have used TV drama to bring to life | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
the human stories behind the news headlines | 0:57:10 | 0:57:12 | |
by creating characters we get to know and empathise with. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
Such was the impact of Peter Kosminsky's 1999 Warriors - | 0:57:19 | 0:57:23 | |
the fictional story of traumatised peacekeeping troops in Bosnia - | 0:57:23 | 0:57:27 | |
that fears were raised within the military that it might impact on Army recruitment drives. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:32 | |
Get on board now! | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
It was a great job you lads did out there. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:38 | |
We're all really proud of you. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:40 | |
You were heroes. All of you. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:42 | |
Yeah. I think, erm... | 0:57:44 | 0:57:45 | |
I think it was shite... | 0:57:47 | 0:57:48 | |
..what we did. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:51 | |
Leaving people to die. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
Jimmy McGovern's Hillsborough was accused of being trial by television | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
when it told the story of the 1989 disaster | 0:58:01 | 0:58:03 | |
from the point of view of the bereaved families. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
What's going on? | 0:58:09 | 0:58:10 | |
Fans forced the gate. | 0:58:10 | 0:58:11 | |
Fans forced their way in and that's the result. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:15 | |
My lads went to a game of football... | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
..and you brought them back home in a coffin. | 0:58:21 | 0:58:23 | |
It was only last year that an official inquiry confirmed the account that | 0:58:24 | 0:58:28 | |
McGovern's television play depicted 20 years earlier. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:32 | |
In the world of investigative journalism, | 0:58:33 | 0:58:36 | |
TV brought to attention crucial issues. | 0:58:36 | 0:58:39 | |
It effected change as a raft of current-affairs programmes were developed | 0:58:39 | 0:58:42 | |
that became a thorn in the Government's side. | 0:58:42 | 0:58:45 | |
Reaching 13 million UK viewers at its peak, | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 | |
World In Action's campaigning style of journalism uncovered corruption | 0:58:50 | 0:58:54 | |
and challenged governments with its mission to comfort the afflicted and | 0:58:54 | 0:58:58 | |
afflict the comfortable. | 0:58:58 | 0:59:00 | |
World In Action challenged Member of Parliament Matthew Paris to prove | 0:59:00 | 0:59:04 | |
the Conservative claim that supplementary benefit is enough to live on. | 0:59:04 | 0:59:07 | |
Cabinet ministers were questioned and so was the British judiciary. | 0:59:08 | 0:59:12 | |
Bombs destroyed two crowded pubs in the heart of Birmingham. | 0:59:13 | 0:59:16 | |
21 people died. | 0:59:16 | 0:59:18 | |
162 were hurt. | 0:59:18 | 0:59:20 | |
Its most celebrated investigation eventually proved the innocence and | 0:59:20 | 0:59:23 | |
secured the release of the Birmingham Six, | 0:59:23 | 0:59:26 | |
wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. | 0:59:26 | 0:59:30 | |
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described the people who made | 0:59:32 | 0:59:36 | |
the series as "just a lot of Trotskyists". | 0:59:36 | 0:59:38 | |
In 1988, an edition of Thames Television's This Week, | 0:59:41 | 0:59:44 | |
Death On The Rock, became the subject of an independent inquiry. | 0:59:44 | 0:59:49 | |
The killing by the SAS of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar has provoked | 0:59:49 | 0:59:54 | |
intense debate throughout the world. | 0:59:54 | 0:59:55 | |
The programme presented evidence | 0:59:56 | 0:59:58 | |
that the IRA members were shot without | 0:59:58 | 1:00:00 | |
warning or while attempting to surrender. | 1:00:00 | 1:00:03 | |
We have interviewed four key witnesses to the shootings. | 1:00:03 | 1:00:07 | |
Their accounts raise serious questions about what really happened that afternoon. | 1:00:07 | 1:00:12 | |
Much to the fury of the Government, and despite attempts to discredit it, | 1:00:12 | 1:00:16 | |
Death On The Rock was vindicated in the inquiry. | 1:00:16 | 1:00:18 | |
But investigative journalism, documentaries and one-to-one | 1:00:20 | 1:00:23 | |
interviews aren't the only way that we have | 1:00:23 | 1:00:26 | |
jolted authority and pricked pomposity in television. | 1:00:26 | 1:00:29 | |
Another has been straightforward abuse. | 1:00:29 | 1:00:32 | |
Satire, comedy and comments from its perpetrators which would have sent | 1:00:32 | 1:00:36 | |
them to jail or got them shot in other countries. | 1:00:36 | 1:00:39 | |
Would you like to order, sir? | 1:00:41 | 1:00:43 | |
Yes. I will have a steak. | 1:00:43 | 1:00:45 | |
-How do you like it? -Oh, raw, please. | 1:00:45 | 1:00:47 | |
And what about the vegetables? | 1:00:47 | 1:00:49 | |
Oh, they'll have the same as me. | 1:00:49 | 1:00:51 | |
# That was the week that was | 1:00:53 | 1:00:55 | |
# Politicians on the rack... # | 1:00:55 | 1:00:57 | |
In 1962, | 1:00:57 | 1:01:00 | |
That Was The Week That Was pushed the boundaries in a way never seen | 1:01:00 | 1:01:03 | |
before. | 1:01:03 | 1:01:04 | |
The programme survived for just 13 months, | 1:01:04 | 1:01:07 | |
before being pulled off the nation's screens in December 1963 for fear it | 1:01:07 | 1:01:11 | |
could comprise the BBC's impartiality with the impending election. | 1:01:11 | 1:01:15 | |
And so there is the choice between the electorate and for the electorate. | 1:01:17 | 1:01:21 | |
On the one hand, Lord Hume, and on the other hand, Mr Harold Wilson. | 1:01:21 | 1:01:26 | |
Dull Alec versus Smart Alec. | 1:01:27 | 1:01:30 | |
Goodnight. | 1:01:30 | 1:01:31 | |
Yes Minister held the workings of government up to ridicule, | 1:01:35 | 1:01:38 | |
including a particularly revealing early insight into our relationship | 1:01:38 | 1:01:42 | |
with the European Union. | 1:01:42 | 1:01:43 | |
We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. | 1:01:43 | 1:01:47 | |
We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. | 1:01:47 | 1:01:50 | |
Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing. | 1:01:50 | 1:01:54 | |
Set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, | 1:01:54 | 1:01:58 | |
the Italians against the Dutch. | 1:01:58 | 1:02:00 | |
The Foreign Office is terribly pleased. | 1:02:00 | 1:02:03 | |
It's just like old times. | 1:02:03 | 1:02:04 | |
Spitting Image showed how making authority figures into grotesque | 1:02:07 | 1:02:10 | |
celebrities could better hold them to account. | 1:02:10 | 1:02:13 | |
So, tell me, Mr Pillock. | 1:02:14 | 1:02:16 | |
-Er, Kinnock. -Kinnock, yes, what is it you do exactly? | 1:02:16 | 1:02:19 | |
I'm the leader of the Labour Party in Britain. | 1:02:19 | 1:02:21 | |
In my country we don't have a political opposition. | 1:02:21 | 1:02:24 | |
No, nor do we. | 1:02:24 | 1:02:25 | |
And with New Labour came new satire. | 1:02:28 | 1:02:31 | |
Preparing for tomorrow's enquiry, | 1:02:32 | 1:02:34 | |
I thought I'd have a look at some of the old speeches I did. | 1:02:34 | 1:02:36 | |
I mean, this is a great one. | 1:02:37 | 1:02:39 | |
Listen to this. "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the | 1:02:39 | 1:02:42 | |
"possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war, | 1:02:42 | 1:02:46 | |
"or sending our children to war." | 1:02:46 | 1:02:48 | |
Crikey. What was I thinking of? | 1:02:49 | 1:02:52 | |
Ed. Get Tom Rudd in, now. We're offering him Northern Ireland, | 1:02:53 | 1:02:56 | |
-the lucky sod. -Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It | 1:02:56 | 1:02:59 | |
also found New Labour fertile territory. | 1:02:59 | 1:03:01 | |
Remtard Remington. | 1:03:01 | 1:03:02 | |
I mean, the guy is an epic fuck-up. | 1:03:02 | 1:03:05 | |
He is so dense that light bends around him. | 1:03:05 | 1:03:08 | |
His savage parody of a spin doctor based on Alastair Campbell resulted | 1:03:08 | 1:03:12 | |
in a brand-new word making its way into the Oxford dictionary. | 1:03:12 | 1:03:16 | |
Jesus Christ, see you, you are the fucking omnishambles, | 1:03:16 | 1:03:20 | |
that's what you are. | 1:03:20 | 1:03:21 | |
Today's media-trained politicians are adept at handling television, | 1:03:22 | 1:03:26 | |
even embracing satire in the hope of appearing less pompous. | 1:03:26 | 1:03:31 | |
David Cameron was very rude about your people, wasn't he, Nigel? | 1:03:31 | 1:03:34 | |
-Oh, he always is. -Yes, he said... | 1:03:34 | 1:03:35 | |
-He can't help himself. -He can't help himself. -Fruitcakes. -Fruitcakes and loonies. | 1:03:35 | 1:03:39 | |
-And loonies, and worse. He said worse than that. -He did. | 1:03:39 | 1:03:41 | |
I think it's time for a game of Fruitcake or Loony? | 1:03:43 | 1:03:45 | |
Has this meant it's become harder to challenge authority? | 1:03:50 | 1:03:54 | |
Or are the political landscape and those who inhabit it | 1:03:54 | 1:03:56 | |
so extraordinary that they are beyond a joke? | 1:03:56 | 1:03:59 | |
So, how successful or otherwise has television been | 1:04:03 | 1:04:06 | |
in holding our leaders to account? | 1:04:06 | 1:04:08 | |
With me to discuss this are the man credited with changing | 1:04:08 | 1:04:12 | |
the face of TV comedy with shows like Spitting Image | 1:04:12 | 1:04:14 | |
and Not The Nine O'Clock News, John Lloyd. | 1:04:14 | 1:04:17 | |
A former Shadow Chancellor turned dancing sensation, Ed Balls. | 1:04:17 | 1:04:20 | |
And presenter of Radio Four's The World At One and former political editor | 1:04:20 | 1:04:25 | |
of BBC Two's Newsnight Martha Kearney. | 1:04:25 | 1:04:27 | |
Ed, why do you think politicians fear to be interviewed | 1:04:27 | 1:04:32 | |
and are given such a hard time? | 1:04:32 | 1:04:35 | |
I think if you go into an interview, you are expecting these days | 1:04:35 | 1:04:41 | |
to have a very well-prepared interviewer, | 1:04:41 | 1:04:46 | |
who has the most difficult questions, | 1:04:46 | 1:04:49 | |
and they're not going to let you get away with not answering the question, | 1:04:49 | 1:04:52 | |
because the public now are very, I think, educated about evasion and | 1:04:52 | 1:04:57 | |
they can smell it a mile off, | 1:04:57 | 1:04:58 | |
and sometimes as a politician it's hard to give a straight answer, | 1:04:58 | 1:05:02 | |
and the worst place you want to be is evading and twisting and knowing | 1:05:02 | 1:05:06 | |
that you're not being straight with the interviewer, | 1:05:06 | 1:05:09 | |
because that's disrespectful and the public at home see that and don't | 1:05:09 | 1:05:13 | |
like it, and so you always have to be on your mettle and ready for that tough question. | 1:05:13 | 1:05:19 | |
Do you look back with envy at the time when Clement Attlee | 1:05:19 | 1:05:21 | |
could just say "no", and the interviewer would shut up? | 1:05:21 | 1:05:24 | |
It's a funny thing, though, because as a politician you become skilled | 1:05:24 | 1:05:28 | |
at answering the difficult questions and preparing. | 1:05:28 | 1:05:32 | |
In some ways, the moments that I found hardest - | 1:05:32 | 1:05:35 | |
which didn't happen that often - | 1:05:35 | 1:05:37 | |
would be when you were on the Today programme or on The World At One and | 1:05:37 | 1:05:40 | |
the first question would be, "So, what have you got to say?" | 1:05:40 | 1:05:44 | |
And you would think... | 1:05:44 | 1:05:46 | |
I'm ready for the hard question, | 1:05:46 | 1:05:48 | |
but you just want me to summarise my point in 20 seconds? | 1:05:48 | 1:05:51 | |
And I think what happened over time was that the interviewers knew that | 1:05:51 | 1:05:56 | |
simply doing the tough questions can get a bit boring and sterile and | 1:05:56 | 1:06:00 | |
sometimes the hardest interviews are the ones where... | 1:06:00 | 1:06:03 | |
In some ways, David Frost was a past master at this, but in more recent | 1:06:03 | 1:06:07 | |
times, the interviewer who beguiles you into making a mistake or a slip, | 1:06:07 | 1:06:11 | |
not by being tough and interrogating, | 1:06:11 | 1:06:13 | |
but giving you the space to trip yourself up. | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
Martha, it seems to me, I know a lot of good journalists and so do you, | 1:06:16 | 1:06:20 | |
and good politicians. | 1:06:20 | 1:06:22 | |
Why do they seem to be at each other's throats so often and giving | 1:06:22 | 1:06:26 | |
both sides such a bad name? | 1:06:26 | 1:06:27 | |
I think it's the way that society has changed. | 1:06:29 | 1:06:31 | |
I loved seeing that Clem Attlee interview, | 1:06:31 | 1:06:33 | |
and I'm sure you'd love it if I said, | 1:06:33 | 1:06:35 | |
"Is there anything more you'd like to say about the coming election?" | 1:06:35 | 1:06:38 | |
-My worst nightmare. -We'll try that out one day. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:40 | |
But I think you saw through those clips the way that society itself | 1:06:40 | 1:06:45 | |
has become more challenging towards figures in authority and I think voters now expect us to do that. | 1:06:45 | 1:06:51 | |
And it's quite interesting, when I'm doing interviews I will often have | 1:06:51 | 1:06:54 | |
a Twitter feed now, and there will be people saying, they are not answering you, | 1:06:54 | 1:06:58 | |
and they are egging you on to challenge politicians. | 1:06:58 | 1:07:00 | |
Clearly, there's a balance because we wouldn't want to encourage too | 1:07:00 | 1:07:04 | |
much cynicism but, on the other hand, | 1:07:04 | 1:07:07 | |
it is part of our democracy to be able to challenge figures in authority. | 1:07:07 | 1:07:10 | |
Yeah, but to come back to the question, why do you think... | 1:07:10 | 1:07:13 | |
Am I not answering your question? | 1:07:13 | 1:07:15 | |
I apologise. That would be hypocrisy. | 1:07:15 | 1:07:17 | |
Why do you think in polls journalists and politicians... | 1:07:17 | 1:07:20 | |
We have known a lot of good ones... | 1:07:20 | 1:07:22 | |
Why are they so low down the list? | 1:07:22 | 1:07:24 | |
Why does the general public think they don't want to have much to do with that lot? And the other lot? | 1:07:24 | 1:07:29 | |
I think that's because of the way people's attitudes towards authority | 1:07:29 | 1:07:34 | |
have changed and journalists and broadcasters are seen as being part of the establishment | 1:07:34 | 1:07:38 | |
in the same way that politicians are, | 1:07:38 | 1:07:41 | |
and I think that's why it's so interesting the world we're | 1:07:41 | 1:07:44 | |
living in at the moment, with the growth of social media, which means that people - | 1:07:44 | 1:07:48 | |
both politicians and members of the public - | 1:07:48 | 1:07:50 | |
can bypass broadcasters and talk directly to each other, | 1:07:50 | 1:07:54 | |
which presents a real challenge for broadcasters. | 1:07:54 | 1:07:56 | |
In that last clump of film I used the words "television is a lie detector", | 1:07:56 | 1:08:00 | |
which is a phrase of Pauline Kael in the New Yorker, saying... | 1:08:00 | 1:08:04 | |
Do you think that's true? | 1:08:04 | 1:08:06 | |
I think that's true. The most famous example of that is the Nixon Kennedy | 1:08:06 | 1:08:10 | |
debates, where people thought that Nixon won on the radio but lost on | 1:08:10 | 1:08:14 | |
the television because of the way he looked, the way he was sweating under pressure. | 1:08:14 | 1:08:19 | |
And I think you can see that and I think one of the great weapons of | 1:08:19 | 1:08:22 | |
television is the knowing pause or knowing when people are stumbling | 1:08:22 | 1:08:27 | |
and I think people are very discerning about the micro-facial analysis, if you like. | 1:08:27 | 1:08:31 | |
They do know when people are dissembling in some way. | 1:08:31 | 1:08:34 | |
What about if politicians can't answer the question as swiftly and | 1:08:34 | 1:08:39 | |
as concisely as you want? | 1:08:39 | 1:08:40 | |
You've only got two minutes left of the interview. | 1:08:40 | 1:08:43 | |
What about that? Do you not feel maybe it's the wrong question or maybe we | 1:08:43 | 1:08:46 | |
should say, you're not going to answer that because it's going to take five paragraphs | 1:08:46 | 1:08:49 | |
and we've only got time for two sentences? | 1:08:49 | 1:08:51 | |
As you know, you will have somebody in your ear telling you. | 1:08:51 | 1:08:55 | |
There will be points - it is interesting what Ed was saying. | 1:08:55 | 1:08:58 | |
There will be points when politicians have to lie for the sake | 1:08:58 | 1:09:02 | |
of Parliamentary democracy, which sounds like a paradox, | 1:09:02 | 1:09:05 | |
but it's because Ed Balls will not agree with absolutely everything | 1:09:05 | 1:09:09 | |
that other members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet are saying | 1:09:09 | 1:09:12 | |
but in order to keep party unity or a collective responsibility he has to toe the party line. | 1:09:12 | 1:09:17 | |
On the other hand, | 1:09:17 | 1:09:19 | |
we know as journalists there are divisions within politics and it is | 1:09:19 | 1:09:23 | |
our duty to expose it, | 1:09:23 | 1:09:25 | |
so you will ask a question a number of times in order to show to | 1:09:25 | 1:09:29 | |
the audience, hang on, there's a problem here. | 1:09:29 | 1:09:32 | |
Which is what Jeremy Paxman did, of course, with Michael Howard. | 1:09:32 | 1:09:35 | |
John Lloyd, Spitting Image, you turned that into a political programme. | 1:09:35 | 1:09:38 | |
Why did it have such an impact when actually it was an attack dog all | 1:09:38 | 1:09:42 | |
the time? Can you unravel that? | 1:09:42 | 1:09:45 | |
I think one of the things was a lot had been said about insiders and | 1:09:45 | 1:09:49 | |
outsiders and we were all... | 1:09:49 | 1:09:51 | |
I wasn't so much, but all the team were outsiders. | 1:09:51 | 1:09:54 | |
Obviously the puppets had never been on television before. | 1:09:54 | 1:09:57 | |
But most of the writers hadn't worked for television very much and the puppeteers certainly hadn't. | 1:09:57 | 1:10:02 | |
So there was a sense when it first arrived that it was like... | 1:10:02 | 1:10:06 | |
I remember being quite shocked by people's reaction to it. | 1:10:06 | 1:10:10 | |
Generally rather anti, because it appeared so ugly and so strange. | 1:10:10 | 1:10:15 | |
It was a bit like when The Young Ones arrived or when Big Brother arrived | 1:10:15 | 1:10:18 | |
or some of the programmes you have mentioned when you are seeing people | 1:10:18 | 1:10:21 | |
on television you have never seen before, | 1:10:21 | 1:10:23 | |
and Spitting Image offered opinions that weren't... | 1:10:23 | 1:10:26 | |
In the pubs, you would hear them but you wouldn't hear them on a more | 1:10:26 | 1:10:30 | |
genteel comedy show. | 1:10:30 | 1:10:32 | |
It was the most tremendous success. | 1:10:32 | 1:10:34 | |
13 million, we're talking about light entertainment programmes.... | 1:10:34 | 1:10:37 | |
15 million, actually. | 1:10:37 | 1:10:38 | |
I'm awfully sorry! | 1:10:38 | 1:10:40 | |
-Sorry about the insult. -It was 1.5 million more people every week than | 1:10:40 | 1:10:44 | |
it had taken to re-elect the Thatcher administration in 1983, as it happens. | 1:10:44 | 1:10:48 | |
Trust you to know that! | 1:10:48 | 1:10:50 | |
So, why do you think it did have that big appeal, that it had appeal | 1:10:51 | 1:10:54 | |
to three or four million, a niche, but not mass appeal? | 1:10:54 | 1:10:58 | |
I am at a loss to say why, Melvyn, because we were in the third series, | 1:10:58 | 1:11:02 | |
the last one I produced, in 1986, | 1:11:02 | 1:11:04 | |
we got to number three in the ratings and I thought we must be | 1:11:04 | 1:11:07 | |
doing something wrong if it's that popular, | 1:11:07 | 1:11:09 | |
but I think it's when you are speaking the unspoken. | 1:11:09 | 1:11:13 | |
The reaction of the audience here in the studio is interesting. | 1:11:13 | 1:11:16 | |
Political issues that get people then, as now, very riled up and angry, | 1:11:16 | 1:11:21 | |
when people are laughing about it, | 1:11:21 | 1:11:23 | |
the issues are being aired and talked about but in a much friendlier, jollier way. | 1:11:23 | 1:11:28 | |
I think most politicians - maybe Ed would bear me out - | 1:11:28 | 1:11:32 | |
most politicians miss Spitting Image because of the fact that people were | 1:11:32 | 1:11:36 | |
much better known. | 1:11:36 | 1:11:37 | |
The average 13-year-old could easily have named ten members of | 1:11:38 | 1:11:41 | |
Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet and four members of the Shadow Cabinet without thinking | 1:11:41 | 1:11:45 | |
about it, which has not been possible since. | 1:11:45 | 1:11:47 | |
Was there a chance by lampooning people, attacking them in such a way, | 1:11:47 | 1:11:50 | |
-you were increasing their popularity? -Yes. | 1:11:50 | 1:11:53 | |
-What do you think about that? -I think that's... | 1:11:53 | 1:11:55 | |
Yes, correct. | 1:11:55 | 1:11:57 | |
I think it's absolutely true that in fact the tougher the politician | 1:11:57 | 1:12:02 | |
the more we portrayed them as a tough person, | 1:12:02 | 1:12:05 | |
the more they liked it. | 1:12:05 | 1:12:06 | |
Classically, with David Owen, who was always terribly smooth... | 1:12:06 | 1:12:11 | |
David Steel was a tiny little fella like that... | 1:12:11 | 1:12:14 | |
David Steel was always very upset about it and David Owen thought it | 1:12:14 | 1:12:18 | |
-was marvellous. -David Steel actually thought it damaged him because you put | 1:12:18 | 1:12:21 | |
him in David Owen's pocket and I remember interviewing David Steel | 1:12:21 | 1:12:24 | |
about that and he thought in the '87 election it had a damaging effect. | 1:12:24 | 1:12:29 | |
"It's totally unfair, I'm half an inch taller than Neil Kinnock." | 1:12:29 | 1:12:31 | |
I think the great thing about our society, over the centuries, | 1:12:33 | 1:12:36 | |
is we have always had a disrespect about people being too pompous and | 1:12:36 | 1:12:41 | |
we've always wanted to use humour. | 1:12:41 | 1:12:43 | |
If you think back to Passport To Pimlico, | 1:12:43 | 1:12:46 | |
that was a real attack on the establishment politicians in the late 1940s. | 1:12:46 | 1:12:50 | |
In some ways, what was interesting is that political interviewing took | 1:12:50 | 1:12:54 | |
time to catch up with the public's interest in humour and tough questions. | 1:12:54 | 1:12:57 | |
The only thing I would say which I disagree on is that I don't | 1:12:57 | 1:13:01 | |
think Spitting Image would now be made in the same way. | 1:13:01 | 1:13:05 | |
The fact is that David Steel was short, it wasn't his fault, | 1:13:05 | 1:13:08 | |
and Roy Hattersley had a speech impediment that wasn't his fault. | 1:13:08 | 1:13:11 | |
If I had been on Spitting Image they would have had me with a stammer, and that wasn't my fault. | 1:13:11 | 1:13:15 | |
And I think, at times, it kind of pushed up against the edge. | 1:13:15 | 1:13:18 | |
Thank you, Ed. Thanks, John Lloyd, Martha Kearney and Ed Balls. | 1:13:18 | 1:13:21 | |
On we go. If television has made it harder for governments to conceal | 1:13:21 | 1:13:25 | |
their own activities from public scrutiny, | 1:13:25 | 1:13:27 | |
it has also made it near impossible for them to hide other aspects of | 1:13:27 | 1:13:31 | |
the wider world which some might prefer us not to see. | 1:13:31 | 1:13:34 | |
In the earliest days, cameras were big, | 1:13:34 | 1:13:36 | |
cumbersome things which could only be used in the studio or a controlled environment | 1:13:36 | 1:13:39 | |
and even when the news camera became light enough to be | 1:13:39 | 1:13:42 | |
portable, shooting on film brought limitations and delays. | 1:13:42 | 1:13:46 | |
Now everyone can be a camera. | 1:13:46 | 1:13:48 | |
Pathe newsreels like this one were the precursors to TV news | 1:13:52 | 1:13:55 | |
reporting and the limitations of early technology gave time and | 1:13:55 | 1:13:59 | |
opportunity for the authorities to predigest news and then relay it to | 1:13:59 | 1:14:03 | |
the audience complete with the spin that suited them. | 1:14:03 | 1:14:06 | |
There was to be no question that the retreat from Dunkirk could be | 1:14:07 | 1:14:11 | |
presented to the public as a defeat. | 1:14:11 | 1:14:14 | |
They're worn out and footsore, they're hungry, | 1:14:14 | 1:14:16 | |
for weeks they have been shelled and bombed from three sides, | 1:14:16 | 1:14:19 | |
they had to stagger back to the sea to survive. | 1:14:19 | 1:14:21 | |
Round these men there hangs an atmosphere of glory. | 1:14:21 | 1:14:25 | |
But even under military control, | 1:14:26 | 1:14:29 | |
TV reporters and cameras in war zones | 1:14:29 | 1:14:31 | |
was soon proving to be a menace for | 1:14:31 | 1:14:33 | |
the generals and politicians who needed public support for their policies. | 1:14:33 | 1:14:36 | |
Still, today, the US military believes that the Vietnam War was lost in | 1:14:38 | 1:14:42 | |
the living rooms of America as, night after night, | 1:14:42 | 1:14:45 | |
the sight of body-bags bringing home dead GIs sickened the public and | 1:14:45 | 1:14:49 | |
created irresistible pressure to end the conflict. | 1:14:49 | 1:14:52 | |
The lesson was well learned in Britain in the Falklands War when | 1:14:55 | 1:14:58 | |
the price of a ticket onboard an aircraft carrier taking servicemen | 1:14:58 | 1:15:01 | |
into battle was to submit reports for censorship. | 1:15:01 | 1:15:04 | |
I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid but I counted | 1:15:05 | 1:15:09 | |
them all out and I counted them all back. | 1:15:09 | 1:15:11 | |
Their pilots were unhurt, tearful and jubilant, | 1:15:11 | 1:15:14 | |
giving thumbs-up signs. | 1:15:14 | 1:15:16 | |
Reporting the first shooting war since 1945, | 1:15:17 | 1:15:20 | |
broadcasters had to feel their way on how to pitch their coverage. | 1:15:20 | 1:15:24 | |
Peter Snow caused an uproar when he referred to "the British" rather than "we". | 1:15:25 | 1:15:30 | |
There is a stage in the coverage of any conflict where you can begin | 1:15:30 | 1:15:33 | |
to discern the level of accuracy of the claims and counterclaims | 1:15:33 | 1:15:37 | |
of either side. Well, now, tonight, after two days, | 1:15:37 | 1:15:40 | |
it must be said that we cannot demonstrate that the British have lied to us so far. | 1:15:40 | 1:15:44 | |
There are occasions when some commentators will say, | 1:15:44 | 1:15:48 | |
"If the Argentines did something" and then | 1:15:48 | 1:15:50 | |
"the British did something", | 1:15:50 | 1:15:51 | |
I can only say that if this is so, | 1:15:51 | 1:15:53 | |
it does give offence and cause great emotion among many, many people. | 1:15:53 | 1:15:59 | |
Hear, hear! | 1:15:59 | 1:16:00 | |
More recently, the practice of embedding reporters with the military has | 1:16:01 | 1:16:06 | |
inevitably involved submitting to an element of control. | 1:16:06 | 1:16:09 | |
It's a journalist's dilemma - | 1:16:09 | 1:16:11 | |
either stay at home or go with the military | 1:16:11 | 1:16:13 | |
and see what they want you to see. | 1:16:13 | 1:16:16 | |
We're headed along the banks of the banks of the Tigris River, | 1:16:16 | 1:16:19 | |
pursuing pockets of resistance, | 1:16:19 | 1:16:21 | |
involving members of the Republican Guard, and all the time | 1:16:21 | 1:16:24 | |
closing in on the capital, Baghdad. | 1:16:24 | 1:16:26 | |
But more and more often, lightweight cameras and mobile transmitters have | 1:16:29 | 1:16:33 | |
allowed TV reporters to break away from military control and tell | 1:16:33 | 1:16:37 | |
the story right where and when it is happening. | 1:16:37 | 1:16:40 | |
After hours of shooting and facing a line of troops, | 1:16:40 | 1:16:44 | |
the crowd is still here - | 1:16:44 | 1:16:46 | |
they're shouting, "Stop the killing!" | 1:16:46 | 1:16:49 | |
and "Down with the government!" | 1:16:49 | 1:16:51 | |
And even more irritating for the authorities, | 1:16:51 | 1:16:53 | |
is when a reporter not only makes his own way into a conflict zone, | 1:16:53 | 1:16:57 | |
but then shows us first-hand evidence that what the authorities | 1:16:57 | 1:17:01 | |
are telling us isn't quite the case. | 1:17:01 | 1:17:04 | |
It's a very surreal situation here in Baghdad. | 1:17:04 | 1:17:07 | |
We've heard those reports of American columns | 1:17:07 | 1:17:09 | |
penetrating into the centre | 1:17:09 | 1:17:11 | |
of the city. I've been around Baghdad to its outskirts, | 1:17:11 | 1:17:14 | |
trying to find them. | 1:17:14 | 1:17:15 | |
We drove around the Iraqi capital for well over an hour, | 1:17:17 | 1:17:21 | |
with no sign of coalition forces. | 1:17:21 | 1:17:23 | |
Undoubtedly the most profound development in war coverage has | 1:17:26 | 1:17:30 | |
been TV's ability to report live and in real time. | 1:17:30 | 1:17:33 | |
As Allied forces pounded Saddam Hussein's Iraq | 1:17:35 | 1:17:38 | |
in the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003, | 1:17:38 | 1:17:41 | |
a worldwide audience of more than a billion people | 1:17:41 | 1:17:44 | |
watched images obtained from camera-equipped hi-tech weaponry. | 1:17:44 | 1:17:47 | |
We saw what those firing the rockets saw. | 1:17:48 | 1:17:51 | |
But some feared that the Star Wars-type coverage - | 1:17:54 | 1:17:57 | |
feeling more like an advanced video game than real-life - | 1:17:57 | 1:18:00 | |
distanced us from the real effects of war. | 1:18:00 | 1:18:03 | |
But live reporting hasn't all been up in the air. | 1:18:05 | 1:18:08 | |
Very much down on the ground in reporting the Libyan uprising in 2011, | 1:18:08 | 1:18:14 | |
Sky News's Alex Crawford and her crew | 1:18:14 | 1:18:16 | |
rode into Tripoli on the back of a rebel pick-up truck | 1:18:16 | 1:18:18 | |
with the vehicle's cigarette lighter socket powering | 1:18:18 | 1:18:22 | |
the satellite link to send back this extraordinarily live coverage. | 1:18:22 | 1:18:26 | |
They feel liberated... That's water being thrown, they do | 1:18:26 | 1:18:30 | |
that in celebration, as well. | 1:18:30 | 1:18:32 | |
And are fireworks being lit, guns going off | 1:18:32 | 1:18:36 | |
everywhere, it's an absolutely amazing sight. | 1:18:36 | 1:18:40 | |
Day after day, brave war correspondents risk their lives to bring us | 1:18:41 | 1:18:44 | |
their take on the ugly reality they witness. | 1:18:44 | 1:18:47 | |
And they do it 24 hours a day to feed the voracious appetites of the rolling news channels | 1:18:47 | 1:18:52 | |
which do their best to tell us about the world we live in. | 1:18:52 | 1:18:56 | |
But more often than not it's been left to longer-form reporting and | 1:18:59 | 1:19:02 | |
documentaries to bring home the real horror from war and disasters and | 1:19:02 | 1:19:05 | |
put them into a context which will help us understand. | 1:19:05 | 1:19:09 | |
Michael Buerk's 1984 reports from the Ethiopian famine resonate now | 1:19:09 | 1:19:14 | |
just as effectively as they did 33 years ago. | 1:19:14 | 1:19:18 | |
Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on | 1:19:18 | 1:19:22 | |
the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine. | 1:19:22 | 1:19:26 | |
Now, in the 20th century. | 1:19:26 | 1:19:28 | |
This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth. | 1:19:29 | 1:19:34 | |
Ethiopia is turning into the worst human disaster for a decade - | 1:19:34 | 1:19:38 | |
a disaster begun by nature but compounded by man. | 1:19:38 | 1:19:41 | |
The power of documentary to delve deeply into the truth behind the daily news headlines | 1:19:45 | 1:19:49 | |
was brilliantly illustrated in Angus McQueen's 1995 | 1:19:49 | 1:19:54 | |
Death Of Yugoslavia, | 1:19:54 | 1:19:56 | |
which not only offered a complex overview of an unfolding tragedy, | 1:19:56 | 1:19:59 | |
but also provided clear evidence of a war crime as it unfolded. | 1:19:59 | 1:20:04 | |
Milosovic sent the Bosnian Serbs a new general to run their army - Ratko Mladic. | 1:20:04 | 1:20:10 | |
This is what he ordered for Sarajevo. | 1:20:10 | 1:20:12 | |
Meanwhile, Fergal Keane's devastating Panorama from Rwanda | 1:20:50 | 1:20:54 | |
in 1994, Journey Into Darkness, | 1:20:54 | 1:20:56 | |
practically forced us to watch the almost unwatchable. | 1:20:56 | 1:20:59 | |
It brought home for the first time the full horror of that country's | 1:21:01 | 1:21:04 | |
tragic civil war. | 1:21:04 | 1:21:06 | |
The victims, all of them Tutsis, | 1:21:07 | 1:21:09 | |
had gone to the church in search of sanctuary. | 1:21:09 | 1:21:12 | |
Instead, the house of God became a killing ground. | 1:21:12 | 1:21:15 | |
Such catastrophes are all too common around our shrinking planet | 1:21:18 | 1:21:22 | |
and, worryingly, many of us are in danger of what is called compassion | 1:21:22 | 1:21:25 | |
fatigue, or just a feeling of helplessness. | 1:21:25 | 1:21:28 | |
And ironically, where pictures of mass disaster are increasingly | 1:21:29 | 1:21:33 | |
commonplace, sometimes it takes a simple story | 1:21:33 | 1:21:36 | |
of a single small child to move us to tears. | 1:21:36 | 1:21:39 | |
How has the unprecedented access to world news that we have enjoyed over | 1:21:41 | 1:21:45 | |
the last 60 years affected us? | 1:21:45 | 1:21:47 | |
Do we now see ourselves as global citizens, | 1:21:47 | 1:21:49 | |
with a responsibility for all our fellow humans? | 1:21:49 | 1:21:52 | |
Or have we become too crushed by too much news, too weary? | 1:21:52 | 1:21:56 | |
Joining me to discuss this are the BBC's chief international correspondent, | 1:21:56 | 1:22:00 | |
Lyse Doucet, special correspondent for Sky News Alex Crawford, | 1:22:00 | 1:22:04 | |
and former director of global news at the BBC Richard Sambrook. | 1:22:04 | 1:22:08 | |
Lyse Doucet, as a reporter in some of the worst war zone areas - | 1:22:08 | 1:22:12 | |
and I've listened to you an awful lot - erm, this phrase, | 1:22:12 | 1:22:15 | |
compassion fatigue, you must - | 1:22:15 | 1:22:17 | |
of course you are more aware of it than anyone else | 1:22:17 | 1:22:20 | |
but do you feel it is | 1:22:20 | 1:22:21 | |
something you have to be aware of when you're reporting? | 1:22:21 | 1:22:24 | |
It's not something that I think about. | 1:22:25 | 1:22:28 | |
I don't think Alex or any of us think about it. | 1:22:28 | 1:22:30 | |
But we do think about our responsibility to convey the enormity and | 1:22:30 | 1:22:36 | |
sometimes the horror of what we have seen, | 1:22:36 | 1:22:39 | |
and to do it in a way which clarifies and leads people to care about it. | 1:22:39 | 1:22:44 | |
And that imposes a special responsibility, | 1:22:44 | 1:22:47 | |
because it means not showing emotion but showing empathy, I believe. | 1:22:47 | 1:22:51 | |
Trying to stand in the shoes of people that no-one here today would | 1:22:51 | 1:22:56 | |
ever want to stand in and to convey that to people. | 1:22:56 | 1:22:59 | |
But it is true that the world now, if you look around the world - | 1:22:59 | 1:23:02 | |
although a social scientist may say the world is a more peaceful place - | 1:23:02 | 1:23:06 | |
the wars of our time are among the most brutal wars I think we have seen. | 1:23:06 | 1:23:10 | |
Syria, Yemen, these are wars in which war crimes - | 1:23:10 | 1:23:14 | |
alleged war crimes - are being committed on an almost daily basis. | 1:23:14 | 1:23:17 | |
And it shows up... | 1:23:17 | 1:23:18 | |
..less the compassion of the world but the incapacity of world leaders to do something about it. | 1:23:19 | 1:23:26 | |
And it's, how do you connect the images which break through | 1:23:26 | 1:23:30 | |
with the leadership who | 1:23:30 | 1:23:32 | |
can do something about it if they really wanted to? | 1:23:32 | 1:23:37 | |
But interests sometimes, and often, are put in front of... | 1:23:37 | 1:23:42 | |
of real efforts to try to work together to solve the world's problems. | 1:23:42 | 1:23:47 | |
You're in this particular area of mayhem, it's terrible. | 1:23:47 | 1:23:50 | |
Do you have... | 1:23:50 | 1:23:52 | |
Maybe this is a crude question. | 1:23:52 | 1:23:54 | |
-If you think it is, don't answer it. -That's OK. Crude questions. | 1:23:54 | 1:23:57 | |
But do you have a way to get into that, think, | 1:23:57 | 1:23:59 | |
"The way I can really report that is to go to that house, to that child, | 1:23:59 | 1:24:03 | |
"or to stand back and look at that crowd rushing down a street"? | 1:24:03 | 1:24:06 | |
Are there ways of doing it or do you have to take what comes along and | 1:24:06 | 1:24:09 | |
hits you in the face? | 1:24:09 | 1:24:10 | |
In going time and again to Syria, which is truly a war of our time, | 1:24:11 | 1:24:17 | |
it is arguably the most complex, the most consequential, | 1:24:17 | 1:24:21 | |
the most complex war of our time, | 1:24:21 | 1:24:23 | |
a war which is no longer about Syria because Syria is now not out there, | 1:24:23 | 1:24:27 | |
Syria is down the street, in our home, in our schools, | 1:24:27 | 1:24:30 | |
it's part of our lives. | 1:24:30 | 1:24:32 | |
And the only way that I can make sense of it and the only way that I | 1:24:32 | 1:24:35 | |
can convey to people what they must try to understand about it is to | 1:24:35 | 1:24:40 | |
look at it not as a big geopolitical story but to drill it down to the essential, | 1:24:40 | 1:24:44 | |
which is a story about mothers, fathers, children, neighbours, society. | 1:24:44 | 1:24:49 | |
You know, when I come back to London, I think, | 1:24:49 | 1:24:52 | |
"What if my entire street was now ruins? | 1:24:52 | 1:24:55 | |
"What if everything I've held dear to me - both people and places - | 1:24:55 | 1:24:59 | |
"all of my stored memories, were now in ruin, forcing me to flee? | 1:24:59 | 1:25:03 | |
"How do I begin to convey this to people, | 1:25:03 | 1:25:05 | |
"to understand the enormity of what others have to go through?" | 1:25:05 | 1:25:08 | |
So, essentially, I see it as a human story because the politics are so | 1:25:08 | 1:25:13 | |
divisive that I... | 1:25:13 | 1:25:14 | |
This is how I believe that both I can understand it and get other | 1:25:14 | 1:25:18 | |
people to think that's how they can begin to... | 1:25:18 | 1:25:21 | |
to relate to it in any way at all. | 1:25:21 | 1:25:23 | |
Alex, we saw you on the film, there, in the... | 1:25:23 | 1:25:27 | |
Cigarette lighter in the truck, getting the pictures back. | 1:25:28 | 1:25:31 | |
Your report was extraordinary. | 1:25:31 | 1:25:32 | |
And we are in a stage now where you can do it, you can be instant. | 1:25:32 | 1:25:37 | |
Erm, is there a sense... | 1:25:37 | 1:25:40 | |
Is that... Is that a help for you all the time? | 1:25:40 | 1:25:42 | |
Or can it be confusing? | 1:25:42 | 1:25:44 | |
Can the instant be confused with the interesting? | 1:25:44 | 1:25:47 | |
I definitely don't think it's a help all the time, definitely not. | 1:25:47 | 1:25:50 | |
But if you're reporting on key, | 1:25:50 | 1:25:52 | |
seismic events like that one was - | 1:25:52 | 1:25:55 | |
because if you remember, at that stage, Colonel Gaddafi was still | 1:25:55 | 1:25:59 | |
saying, "We're in control everywhere." | 1:25:59 | 1:26:01 | |
Even the next day, | 1:26:01 | 1:26:03 | |
he was saying he was in control and his sons were saying that. | 1:26:03 | 1:26:06 | |
So, at that particular moment - and there are several of them - | 1:26:06 | 1:26:10 | |
that had a seismic effect because it completely contradicted the lie that | 1:26:10 | 1:26:15 | |
was being perpetuated. | 1:26:15 | 1:26:16 | |
And if we hadn't been there, then the lie would have continued. | 1:26:16 | 1:26:21 | |
So I think that was quite crucial. | 1:26:21 | 1:26:24 | |
But is it a help all the time? | 1:26:24 | 1:26:26 | |
Definitely not, because sometimes you do need to breathe and take... | 1:26:26 | 1:26:30 | |
take in what's going on and, erm... | 1:26:30 | 1:26:33 | |
If it's... If events are going so fast, it's quite hard to do that. | 1:26:33 | 1:26:37 | |
However, we are not... We are not competing against the BBC or ITN any more. | 1:26:37 | 1:26:43 | |
We're competing against the person who is next door to us with a mobile | 1:26:43 | 1:26:47 | |
phone. So if you want to present - as most journalists do - | 1:26:47 | 1:26:52 | |
the accurate and the honest depiction of what's going on, | 1:26:52 | 1:26:56 | |
then you have to be mindful that someone else who's not trained | 1:26:56 | 1:27:02 | |
and not got the same motivation | 1:27:02 | 1:27:03 | |
might be putting out something that's going to be misconstrued. | 1:27:03 | 1:27:07 | |
Richard, Richard Sambrook, you remember a time when big, | 1:27:07 | 1:27:10 | |
bulky cameras, long time, put it on a plane, take it back to London, | 1:27:10 | 1:27:13 | |
take a week... Did that have any advantages, | 1:27:13 | 1:27:16 | |
the stuff taking so long to get back? | 1:27:16 | 1:27:18 | |
I'm not talking just to the politicians. | 1:27:18 | 1:27:20 | |
Did it have advantages to editors of programmes and so forth? | 1:27:20 | 1:27:23 | |
Is it good that it's dead and gone? | 1:27:23 | 1:27:25 | |
Erm, I think it did have some advantages and, interestingly, | 1:27:25 | 1:27:28 | |
the video there, you looked at Michael Buerk's | 1:27:28 | 1:27:31 | |
Ethiopia report in 1984. | 1:27:31 | 1:27:33 | |
Now, the point about that was that rather than cut it in the field and | 1:27:33 | 1:27:36 | |
satellite it back, because it was earlier than that, erm, | 1:27:36 | 1:27:39 | |
Michael Buerk had to fly back overnight with the tapes and he spent about | 1:27:39 | 1:27:43 | |
two days going through the tapes and putting it together with that | 1:27:43 | 1:27:46 | |
extraordinary script and the BBC decided to cut what at the time was | 1:27:46 | 1:27:50 | |
very unusual, a ten-minute piece, and lead the news on it. | 1:27:50 | 1:27:53 | |
Now, today, you would have had a satellite dish and you would have | 1:27:53 | 1:27:56 | |
had a quick hit and you'd have had live updates and it would have been a very | 1:27:56 | 1:28:00 | |
different kind of experience and I doubt it would have had quite the same impact. | 1:28:00 | 1:28:03 | |
That was very much of its time in all sorts of ways but it was | 1:28:03 | 1:28:06 | |
because the production and the thought that went into it took its time in | 1:28:06 | 1:28:09 | |
order to do something extraordinary. | 1:28:09 | 1:28:11 | |
Alex and Lyse, both of you, if you're embedded with the troops, | 1:28:11 | 1:28:16 | |
are you compromised? | 1:28:16 | 1:28:17 | |
Are you... Are you compromised? | 1:28:17 | 1:28:19 | |
-You're sort bound to be, a bit? -I think you are a little bit compromised. | 1:28:19 | 1:28:22 | |
-And I hate... -So what's a little bit compromised? | 1:28:22 | 1:28:24 | |
You have to submit your reports to being censored and you can fight with them and argue and you do. | 1:28:24 | 1:28:28 | |
And, I mean, Lyse has got first-hand experience with the Syrian army. | 1:28:28 | 1:28:33 | |
I can't imagine how compromising that must be, you know? | 1:28:33 | 1:28:36 | |
Because you are only being taken to certain places, you are only being seen their side | 1:28:36 | 1:28:40 | |
and you will face the consequences if you don't, if you break out of that. | 1:28:40 | 1:28:45 | |
So I don't like embedding at all. | 1:28:45 | 1:28:47 | |
However, I think there is a purpose to it, | 1:28:47 | 1:28:50 | |
an absolute purpose, because you... | 1:28:50 | 1:28:53 | |
you have to understand how that military is feeling. | 1:28:53 | 1:28:55 | |
Their morale, if they're working, if they've got the right equipment, | 1:28:55 | 1:28:59 | |
and that is all significant, | 1:28:59 | 1:29:01 | |
as to whether they're winning the battle or not. | 1:29:01 | 1:29:03 | |
But embedding comes in different shapes and sizes, as Alex knows. | 1:29:03 | 1:29:06 | |
There are some...some embedding, | 1:29:06 | 1:29:08 | |
if it's a really ferocious battle with the... | 1:29:08 | 1:29:10 | |
sometimes with an established Western military, | 1:29:10 | 1:29:13 | |
where you do have to submit | 1:29:13 | 1:29:14 | |
your papers or your broadcast before you put them to air. | 1:29:14 | 1:29:19 | |
Erm, I haven't done a lot of embedding because I prefer to do | 1:29:19 | 1:29:22 | |
stuff outside but I believe embedding can offer a perspective, | 1:29:22 | 1:29:25 | |
not the ones where you have do submit but there's other embedding | 1:29:25 | 1:29:28 | |
which took place with... in Afghanistan, in Iraq, | 1:29:28 | 1:29:31 | |
where it basically got you access. | 1:29:31 | 1:29:33 | |
It got you access to the front line and you couldn't get there otherwise. | 1:29:33 | 1:29:36 | |
And it gets you an insight into the thinking of soldiers and if Britain | 1:29:36 | 1:29:39 | |
is going to war, you want to know what British soldiers are thinking because | 1:29:39 | 1:29:43 | |
there are British families, you know, | 1:29:43 | 1:29:44 | |
lives are being put on the line so you have a responsibility to report. | 1:29:44 | 1:29:47 | |
-Or even the Syrian army. -Yes, you want to know. -You want to know what they're thinking and how | 1:29:47 | 1:29:51 | |
-they're feeling. -So it does give you... I think, as long as it's not the only reporting | 1:29:51 | 1:29:54 | |
which is being done, I think it's really important because it gets you really inside | 1:29:54 | 1:29:59 | |
the thinking and you cannot do that unless you spend time with them. | 1:29:59 | 1:30:02 | |
The censorship thing, of course, you cannot - | 1:30:02 | 1:30:05 | |
you don't want to subscribe to, but I think that's happening less and less. | 1:30:05 | 1:30:08 | |
And for the record, the Syrian army doesn't let a Western journalist embed with them. | 1:30:08 | 1:30:12 | |
They only let the Russians or the Syrians. | 1:30:12 | 1:30:14 | |
That's how far the censorship goes. | 1:30:14 | 1:30:15 | |
We can be in the area but it's not classic embedding, it's sort of... | 1:30:15 | 1:30:18 | |
-Right. -But there are minders, government minders. | 1:30:18 | 1:30:21 | |
Embedding grew out of the Kosovo conflict, of course, | 1:30:21 | 1:30:23 | |
where the Nato forces felt they'd lost control of the narrative, | 1:30:23 | 1:30:26 | |
lost control of the story, and Jamie Shea, the Nato spokesman at the time, | 1:30:26 | 1:30:29 | |
said, "We've learned if you don't have the pictures, | 1:30:29 | 1:30:31 | |
"you don't have the story." | 1:30:31 | 1:30:33 | |
And I think that's where the idea of embedding came from and it was an | 1:30:33 | 1:30:35 | |
idea for western countries therefore to control the pictures and control | 1:30:35 | 1:30:39 | |
the story to a greater extent. | 1:30:39 | 1:30:40 | |
But it's the journalist's job to be able to work around that and outside of that. | 1:30:40 | 1:30:43 | |
-Thank you, Richard. -Controlling the narrative... | 1:30:43 | 1:30:46 | |
-Sorry, I'm afraid... -..is now so important because - I think Alex would agree - | 1:30:46 | 1:30:48 | |
that every time a battle is fought on the ground, there's a battle also fought for the narrative | 1:30:48 | 1:30:53 | |
in the war, and never have we had so much information and never have we had so much manipulation. | 1:30:53 | 1:30:57 | |
That's the paradox of our time. | 1:30:57 | 1:31:00 | |
Thank you very much, Lyse Doucet, Richard Sambrook, Alex Crawford. | 1:31:00 | 1:31:03 | |
Thank you very much. | 1:31:03 | 1:31:04 | |
Television has been a follower of social trends in some ways, | 1:31:05 | 1:31:08 | |
has made occasional attempts to lead public opinion in others and has | 1:31:08 | 1:31:11 | |
done its best within its watchdog limitations to challenge our leaders. | 1:31:11 | 1:31:15 | |
But it's also affected our lives in far more subtle ways than merely how | 1:31:15 | 1:31:19 | |
we view the outside world. | 1:31:19 | 1:31:21 | |
How, for example, did the arrival of a big glass window in our living | 1:31:21 | 1:31:24 | |
rooms change the way we lived our daily lives and the way we view each other? | 1:31:24 | 1:31:27 | |
60 years ago, when we were a nation still known for our reserve, | 1:31:30 | 1:31:35 | |
it wasn't uncommon for people to worry about undressing in front of | 1:31:35 | 1:31:38 | |
the television set for fear that it was watching them. | 1:31:38 | 1:31:41 | |
While viewers may have been initially disconcerted by the box in | 1:31:43 | 1:31:46 | |
the corner, they soon got used to it. In fact, they became quite intimate. | 1:31:46 | 1:31:49 | |
The early TV shows did share the kind of cosiness more usually associated with friends | 1:31:49 | 1:31:54 | |
and family who you could turn to for advice on just about anything. | 1:31:54 | 1:31:58 | |
Well, perhaps you'd like to drive for us | 1:31:58 | 1:32:00 | |
so we can see just how far it goes. | 1:32:00 | 1:32:02 | |
Jean's leopard coat is particularly suitable for sportswear and | 1:32:03 | 1:32:06 | |
point-to-point meetings. | 1:32:06 | 1:32:07 | |
From the beginning, British television took on an instructional role, | 1:32:09 | 1:32:12 | |
especially towards children, | 1:32:12 | 1:32:13 | |
fulfilled a role that had been taken by - and still was taken by - | 1:32:13 | 1:32:17 | |
teachers and grandparents and parents. | 1:32:17 | 1:32:19 | |
Blue Peter's a very good example of that, and it was mostly benign. | 1:32:19 | 1:32:23 | |
And people on television sort of influenced the lives of younger people. | 1:32:23 | 1:32:27 | |
Hello, children. | 1:32:29 | 1:32:31 | |
Are you ready to look at the picture book? | 1:32:31 | 1:32:33 | |
I wonder what we shall have today. | 1:32:33 | 1:32:35 | |
But the next stage in the ginger beer making is eight pints of water. | 1:32:35 | 1:32:40 | |
The same instinct to help us improve our lives | 1:32:40 | 1:32:42 | |
has underpinned a huge raft of television for adults, too. | 1:32:42 | 1:32:45 | |
When daytime TV launched, | 1:32:48 | 1:32:50 | |
it included helpful, instructional material, | 1:32:50 | 1:32:53 | |
so that viewers wouldn't feel guilty watching television instead of working. | 1:32:53 | 1:32:57 | |
Hold it. | 1:32:57 | 1:32:59 | |
Slowly. Down. | 1:32:59 | 1:33:01 | |
You, you shouldn't neglect this crew neckline because it helps so much if | 1:33:02 | 1:33:07 | |
you...to dress you around the neck, if you don't want to wear a tie. | 1:33:07 | 1:33:11 | |
In fact, it's really the only neckline that you should really wear | 1:33:11 | 1:33:14 | |
if you're not wearing a tie. | 1:33:14 | 1:33:16 | |
Television has influenced every aspect of our daily lives. | 1:33:16 | 1:33:19 | |
As consumerism grew, TV responded, helping us choose our houses... | 1:33:19 | 1:33:23 | |
This is what I'm going to show you. It's a bungalow. | 1:33:23 | 1:33:25 | |
..to design them... | 1:33:25 | 1:33:27 | |
It's breaking up the white of the uPVC. | 1:33:27 | 1:33:29 | |
And I think it's going to make it a much lighter building as a result. | 1:33:29 | 1:33:32 | |
-..to decorate them. -Oh, my God! | 1:33:32 | 1:33:36 | |
Oh, look at that! | 1:33:36 | 1:33:37 | |
Oh, my God! | 1:33:37 | 1:33:39 | |
It's shown us how to cook. | 1:33:39 | 1:33:41 | |
If you want good crackling, you bully your butcher. | 1:33:41 | 1:33:43 | |
Reheat the soup gently. | 1:33:43 | 1:33:45 | |
It's quite fattening but, you know, who cares? | 1:33:45 | 1:33:48 | |
Told us what to wear and what not. | 1:33:49 | 1:33:51 | |
It's heavy, you know, brawn more than brain look to you. | 1:33:51 | 1:33:56 | |
There is that in this suit. | 1:33:56 | 1:33:58 | |
And how to garden. | 1:33:59 | 1:34:01 | |
That, it thrives on being sprayed. | 1:34:01 | 1:34:03 | |
Oh, you like to spray it? | 1:34:03 | 1:34:04 | |
Yes, but never in daylight. | 1:34:04 | 1:34:06 | |
Of course, never in daylight. | 1:34:06 | 1:34:07 | |
And how not. | 1:34:07 | 1:34:09 | |
Good evening, and welcome to the BBC News. | 1:34:09 | 1:34:11 | |
Inevitably over the years, we've come to trust the friendly | 1:34:11 | 1:34:14 | |
presenters and interviewers appearing on our screens. | 1:34:14 | 1:34:16 | |
Mostly, that trust has been justified. | 1:34:16 | 1:34:19 | |
But occasionally, it hasn't. | 1:34:20 | 1:34:22 | |
The intimacy that rightly or wrongly has made TV personalities feel like | 1:34:27 | 1:34:30 | |
friends has also allowed viewers to gain a quite new relationship with | 1:34:30 | 1:34:34 | |
people in the public eye, | 1:34:34 | 1:34:35 | |
whose personal lives had previously remained private. | 1:34:35 | 1:34:38 | |
Have you ever been with a person dying? | 1:34:38 | 1:34:41 | |
Yes, only once. | 1:34:41 | 1:34:43 | |
Do you remember that? | 1:34:44 | 1:34:46 | |
Someone very close to you? | 1:34:46 | 1:34:47 | |
Did it make a vivid impression? | 1:34:49 | 1:34:51 | |
It did, yes, yes. | 1:34:51 | 1:34:53 | |
Closely shot one-to-one interviews and increasingly informal chat shows | 1:34:53 | 1:34:58 | |
have made well-known figures feel like old pals, | 1:34:58 | 1:35:01 | |
to unwind with on the sofa on a Friday night. | 1:35:01 | 1:35:03 | |
In the old days, when I was drinking, | 1:35:03 | 1:35:05 | |
it was three in the morning and all of a sudden in my hotel | 1:35:05 | 1:35:08 | |
room... It was Peter Cook at the door, going, "Hello, Robin. | 1:35:08 | 1:35:11 | |
"Time for a little fun." | 1:35:11 | 1:35:12 | |
-Three... -Can you box? | 1:35:14 | 1:35:16 | |
-No, no. -Have you ever boxed? | 1:35:16 | 1:35:17 | |
-No. -Well, why do you know so much about boxing? | 1:35:17 | 1:35:19 | |
Give me a nice kiss on the camera. | 1:35:21 | 1:35:23 | |
-On the camera? -On the camera. | 1:35:23 | 1:35:24 | |
Thank you. Happy New Year! | 1:35:26 | 1:35:28 | |
Oh, Happy New Year, Jean-Claude. | 1:35:28 | 1:35:29 | |
This is Channel 4 and you are of course watching the filthy, | 1:35:29 | 1:35:33 | |
sultry Big Breakfast. | 1:35:33 | 1:35:35 | |
And the same medium has allowed us to share extraordinary, | 1:35:35 | 1:35:37 | |
candid and revealing moments, | 1:35:37 | 1:35:39 | |
as with the playwright Dennis Potter in his dying days. | 1:35:39 | 1:35:42 | |
Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, | 1:35:42 | 1:35:46 | |
is a plum tree. It looks like apple blossom | 1:35:46 | 1:35:49 | |
but it's white. | 1:35:49 | 1:35:50 | |
And looking at it, instead of saying, "Oh, that's a nice blossom," | 1:35:50 | 1:35:53 | |
you know, now, the last week, | 1:35:53 | 1:35:56 | |
looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I... | 1:35:56 | 1:35:59 | |
It is the whitest, frothiest, | 1:35:59 | 1:36:02 | |
blossomiest blossom that there ever could be. | 1:36:02 | 1:36:05 | |
But sometimes, TV has given us the illusion of feeling we know some of | 1:36:05 | 1:36:09 | |
the people in the public eye as well as we know our friends, | 1:36:09 | 1:36:12 | |
as with Princess Diana. | 1:36:12 | 1:36:15 | |
By the time she left a glittering charity gala last night, | 1:36:15 | 1:36:18 | |
the world was standing in judgment of an interview that had been | 1:36:18 | 1:36:20 | |
breathtaking in its candour. | 1:36:20 | 1:36:23 | |
As well as admitting adultery, the Princess had, | 1:36:23 | 1:36:25 | |
in the space of less than an hour, dissected her failed marriage, | 1:36:25 | 1:36:28 | |
graphically described her bulimia and cast doubt on her husband's | 1:36:28 | 1:36:32 | |
suitability to be king. | 1:36:32 | 1:36:34 | |
When she died, it felt to many like the death of someone close, hence, | 1:36:34 | 1:36:38 | |
perhaps, the unprecedented public outpouring as so many grieved for | 1:36:38 | 1:36:42 | |
the loss of someone they felt was almost one of the family. | 1:36:42 | 1:36:44 | |
For some, though, it seemed as though the line between | 1:36:46 | 1:36:49 | |
TV soap and TV news had become uncomfortably blurred. | 1:36:49 | 1:36:53 | |
It's the closest race in Big Brother history. | 1:36:57 | 1:37:00 | |
Who wins? You decide. | 1:37:00 | 1:37:03 | |
Those blurred lines made it tempting for producers to wonder whether it | 1:37:03 | 1:37:06 | |
was necessary to have any particular talent to be entertaining on | 1:37:06 | 1:37:10 | |
television. Suddenly, celebrity, | 1:37:10 | 1:37:12 | |
which at one time followed talent and hard work, | 1:37:12 | 1:37:14 | |
inspiration and originality, | 1:37:14 | 1:37:16 | |
could just as easily follow an appearance on Big Brother. | 1:37:16 | 1:37:18 | |
Yay! | 1:37:18 | 1:37:20 | |
And attractive though it may seem, fame - and often notoriety - | 1:37:20 | 1:37:23 | |
can sometimes hit the unsuspecting like a juggernaut. | 1:37:23 | 1:37:27 | |
You know what? I don't need to dignify this stupid, stupid argument. | 1:37:27 | 1:37:31 | |
-You know what? -No, no, no. | 1:37:31 | 1:37:32 | |
Your claim to fame is this. Good for you. | 1:37:32 | 1:37:35 | |
The nation watched in horror as the unsuspecting Jade Goody | 1:37:35 | 1:37:38 | |
dug a hole for herself with her racist remarks. | 1:37:38 | 1:37:41 | |
Nothing could have prepared her for the onslaught which awaited her on | 1:37:41 | 1:37:45 | |
her return to the real world. | 1:37:45 | 1:37:47 | |
Albeit with her consent, the media | 1:37:48 | 1:37:50 | |
followed her pretty much to her grave. | 1:37:50 | 1:37:52 | |
Or was the media culpable in exposing the weaknesses of someone | 1:37:52 | 1:37:57 | |
clearly incapable of protecting | 1:37:57 | 1:37:59 | |
themselves and disgracefully bullying someone who | 1:37:59 | 1:38:02 | |
had given them her trust? | 1:38:02 | 1:38:03 | |
Thank you! | 1:38:03 | 1:38:04 | |
Thank you! | 1:38:04 | 1:38:07 | |
Come on, Jade. | 1:38:07 | 1:38:08 | |
There's no subject too arcane or too off the wall not to attract | 1:38:10 | 1:38:14 | |
television cameras. | 1:38:14 | 1:38:15 | |
We are now at the stage where people want to watch people watching | 1:38:15 | 1:38:19 | |
television. We swallow it up, it swallows us back in. | 1:38:19 | 1:38:22 | |
Recently, he's been telling me his prices have... | 1:38:22 | 1:38:25 | |
The box in the corner was the focal point | 1:38:25 | 1:38:27 | |
for the hilarious Royle Family, | 1:38:27 | 1:38:28 | |
in which the asinine comments of the cast were often | 1:38:28 | 1:38:31 | |
uncomfortably familiar. | 1:38:31 | 1:38:33 | |
He's everywhere, him. He's like shit in a field. | 1:38:33 | 1:38:36 | |
He's a millionaire, him. | 1:38:36 | 1:38:37 | |
Aye, and he's still got ginger bollocks. | 1:38:37 | 1:38:39 | |
Oh, that reminds me, I've got some tangerines in the kitchen. | 1:38:39 | 1:38:42 | |
-Oh, my God! -And more recently, | 1:38:46 | 1:38:48 | |
Gogglebox entertains us by watching viewers watching the TV. | 1:38:48 | 1:38:51 | |
That was awful. | 1:38:56 | 1:38:58 | |
How far is television responsible for leading and bringing about | 1:38:58 | 1:39:02 | |
a breakdown of inhibitions among a nation traditionally famed for its | 1:39:02 | 1:39:06 | |
reserve? And surely it's only a question of time before someone | 1:39:06 | 1:39:09 | |
starts watching us, watching them, | 1:39:09 | 1:39:11 | |
watching the TV or maybe that's what we're doing here tonight. | 1:39:11 | 1:39:14 | |
With me to discuss all this and where it might lead | 1:39:14 | 1:39:17 | |
are former director of entertainment for ITV Elaine Bedell, | 1:39:17 | 1:39:20 | |
producer and creator of ground-breaking shows including Survivor and The Big Breakfast | 1:39:20 | 1:39:24 | |
Charlie Parsons, and writer, broadcaster and television columnist Grace Dent. | 1:39:24 | 1:39:29 | |
Elaine, when you are putting... casting shows, | 1:39:29 | 1:39:33 | |
is there any sense in which you are conscious that these are going into | 1:39:33 | 1:39:37 | |
people's lives, in the sense of being in their sitting rooms and so on? | 1:39:37 | 1:39:41 | |
Do you feel the contact with the viewer to that extent? | 1:39:41 | 1:39:44 | |
Yes, you do. And you feel it very strongly in entertainment shows, | 1:39:45 | 1:39:48 | |
particularly those big, | 1:39:48 | 1:39:50 | |
blockbuster Saturday night shows because the viewers have | 1:39:50 | 1:39:52 | |
a role to play in those shows. | 1:39:52 | 1:39:54 | |
They contribute to the outcome by voting, by phoning in. | 1:39:54 | 1:39:58 | |
And so the relationship has become a very kind of close relationship. | 1:39:58 | 1:40:02 | |
Not only are you watching with all your family, across generational - | 1:40:02 | 1:40:06 | |
that is the thing that those Saturday night shows achieved, | 1:40:06 | 1:40:10 | |
was bringing everybody together in one room to watch the box in the corner - | 1:40:10 | 1:40:14 | |
but equally, you could debate about who you wanted to vote for. | 1:40:14 | 1:40:17 | |
You could influence the outcome of those shows. | 1:40:17 | 1:40:20 | |
And so that made the relationship between the programme, | 1:40:20 | 1:40:23 | |
the programme makers and the viewers incredibly tight. | 1:40:23 | 1:40:26 | |
What did... How did that affect you? | 1:40:27 | 1:40:28 | |
Did you have inhibitions? | 1:40:28 | 1:40:30 | |
Were you cautious? Do you have rules? | 1:40:30 | 1:40:32 | |
You have some rules but on the whole, | 1:40:32 | 1:40:35 | |
the scary and exciting bit of that is that as a producer or | 1:40:35 | 1:40:39 | |
a commissioner, you can't control it. | 1:40:39 | 1:40:41 | |
So it genuinely is in the hands of the viewers. | 1:40:41 | 1:40:45 | |
But I think it's a very human instinct that everybody likes to see talent | 1:40:45 | 1:40:50 | |
rewarded and they like to see bad... | 1:40:50 | 1:40:53 | |
good talent rewarded and they like to see bad talent denigrated | 1:40:53 | 1:40:56 | |
and so it plays into a whole kind of host of human emotions | 1:40:56 | 1:41:00 | |
-that are quite...that are quite common. -Charlie Parsons, | 1:41:00 | 1:41:04 | |
as we mentioned in that compilation, | 1:41:04 | 1:41:05 | |
people said they were frightened to get undressed in front of | 1:41:05 | 1:41:09 | |
the television. We've come a long way since then. | 1:41:09 | 1:41:11 | |
-How did it happen? -Well, I think, actually, | 1:41:11 | 1:41:14 | |
there has been a natural breakdown in society. | 1:41:14 | 1:41:16 | |
You know, if things started to change from the '60s onwards, | 1:41:16 | 1:41:18 | |
-so when I... -Was television part of it - making that breakdown happen, | 1:41:18 | 1:41:22 | |
-do you think? -I think it was, actually, | 1:41:22 | 1:41:24 | |
partly but it was also that there was a sort of reaction, if you like, | 1:41:24 | 1:41:28 | |
to the sort of wartime consensus. | 1:41:28 | 1:41:30 | |
We'd been in peace for a long time. People felt they could be freer. | 1:41:30 | 1:41:33 | |
So, yes, of course, it contributed a lot. | 1:41:33 | 1:41:36 | |
I think to get to the stage where people are actually keen to take | 1:41:36 | 1:41:40 | |
their clothes off on television, | 1:41:40 | 1:41:41 | |
which is obviously where it has sort of ended up, erm, | 1:41:41 | 1:41:44 | |
is just a gradual idea that people can be a part of the television | 1:41:44 | 1:41:48 | |
programme which before then was spooned to them, | 1:41:48 | 1:41:52 | |
in that producers would decide and instruct rather than allow anybody, | 1:41:52 | 1:41:56 | |
if you like, to appear on television. | 1:41:56 | 1:41:59 | |
But it's a huge change. | 1:41:59 | 1:42:00 | |
Nobody in society... Well, nobody, except one or two, | 1:42:00 | 1:42:02 | |
in society would have dreamt of allowing their children, their friends, | 1:42:02 | 1:42:05 | |
to be seen on television taking their clothes off and so on and so forth. | 1:42:05 | 1:42:08 | |
That's changed dramatically. | 1:42:08 | 1:42:10 | |
Is there not one golden bullet that explains all that, Charlie? | 1:42:10 | 1:42:14 | |
Erm, I'd like to think there was but I think I really do think | 1:42:15 | 1:42:18 | |
people change and what happens generation to generation is people react against | 1:42:18 | 1:42:22 | |
their parents. You know, you have to think about it, and as I say, | 1:42:22 | 1:42:25 | |
in the context of the '60s onwards, | 1:42:25 | 1:42:27 | |
loads of music movements or whatever were all about rebelling against | 1:42:27 | 1:42:30 | |
their parents and suddenly, people saw that. | 1:42:30 | 1:42:33 | |
Grace Dent, with the inclusion of real people, do you... | 1:42:33 | 1:42:38 | |
In a lot of television, do you think this is democratic or | 1:42:38 | 1:42:41 | |
is it used for entertainment purposes? | 1:42:41 | 1:42:43 | |
Is there a distinction? | 1:42:43 | 1:42:45 | |
Is it democratic? | 1:42:45 | 1:42:46 | |
I mean, I suppose it is democratic in that anybody who... | 1:42:46 | 1:42:51 | |
anybody who catches the eye of a producer can now apparently be famous | 1:42:51 | 1:42:56 | |
and anybody who...who lights up the public's world can then take it further, | 1:42:56 | 1:43:01 | |
someone like Scarlett. | 1:43:01 | 1:43:03 | |
I mean, it's purely democratic that Scarlett off Gogglebox has now | 1:43:03 | 1:43:07 | |
become one of the most famous people in Britain because she appeared in front of | 1:43:07 | 1:43:11 | |
people for, like, moments at a time and it was elevated to a bigger thing, a huger thing. | 1:43:11 | 1:43:16 | |
She's one of the most famous people in Britain. | 1:43:16 | 1:43:18 | |
So, yes, at some level. | 1:43:18 | 1:43:20 | |
Do you think humiliation plays a part in it? | 1:43:20 | 1:43:22 | |
Does humiliation play a part in... | 1:43:22 | 1:43:24 | |
Er, well, I think that... | 1:43:24 | 1:43:26 | |
I think that it would be very easy for me to do down Big Brother and | 1:43:27 | 1:43:31 | |
say that it's all about humiliation and it's all awful but I absolutely adored it and it's what... | 1:43:31 | 1:43:35 | |
I think it's probably one of the greatest moments of | 1:43:35 | 1:43:38 | |
my life when it first came along. | 1:43:38 | 1:43:40 | |
And I kind of put my entire world round it. | 1:43:40 | 1:43:42 | |
And, yeah, I mean, there's an element of watching people through your fingers. | 1:43:42 | 1:43:46 | |
I think that has to happen. | 1:43:46 | 1:43:48 | |
I think that people do maybe have to have their comeuppance. | 1:43:48 | 1:43:51 | |
I think we maybe have to see things that are uncomfortable. | 1:43:51 | 1:43:53 | |
I'm thinking about The Word, | 1:43:53 | 1:43:55 | |
that programme I used to watch in the '80s and then, you know, | 1:43:55 | 1:43:58 | |
what about that wonderful moment, | 1:43:58 | 1:43:59 | |
I'd Do Anything To Get On Television, | 1:43:59 | 1:44:01 | |
and we would like structure our entire Friday evening to try and get | 1:44:01 | 1:44:05 | |
home from the pub to watch people kind of lick someone's armpit. | 1:44:05 | 1:44:08 | |
I'm sorry, I've lowered the tone. | 1:44:08 | 1:44:10 | |
-I think the democratisation... -No, you haven't. | 1:44:10 | 1:44:12 | |
You haven't at all. | 1:44:12 | 1:44:13 | |
I think the truth is, I mean, it began almost, really, didn't it, | 1:44:13 | 1:44:16 | |
with Paul Watson's The Family in the '70s? | 1:44:16 | 1:44:18 | |
-Yeah. -When you suddenly, you realised that, you know, | 1:44:18 | 1:44:21 | |
it wasn't celebrity or actors and actresses who could command that | 1:44:21 | 1:44:25 | |
sort of national viewing appeal. | 1:44:25 | 1:44:29 | |
It was a very ordinary family from Reading. | 1:44:29 | 1:44:31 | |
And I think what's happened is that, you know, | 1:44:31 | 1:44:34 | |
television has realised that ordinary people can be as charismatic and as | 1:44:34 | 1:44:39 | |
funny and as witty as celebrities and professional television presenters - | 1:44:39 | 1:44:45 | |
forgive me, Melvyn - and so, | 1:44:45 | 1:44:48 | |
they found their place on television and Gogglebox in particular has | 1:44:48 | 1:44:51 | |
-brilliantly celebrated that. -And they know what they're letting themselves in for, you know? | 1:44:51 | 1:44:55 | |
-Do they? I mean, Jade didn't know what she was letting herself in for. -I think, I think she... | 1:44:55 | 1:44:59 | |
I think if she'd watched television, which I'm sure she did, she would. | 1:44:59 | 1:45:02 | |
I mean, she expressed what she thought at the time. | 1:45:02 | 1:45:06 | |
I think she did. I think, you know, I think it's easy to say, "Oh, well, | 1:45:06 | 1:45:10 | |
"we're, as producers, we're exploiting them." | 1:45:10 | 1:45:12 | |
but I think people enter into these things because they actually | 1:45:12 | 1:45:16 | |
volunteer. The Hopefuls - the slot that was on my programme, | 1:45:16 | 1:45:20 | |
The Word - you know, which was the I'd Do Anything To Get On TV, | 1:45:20 | 1:45:23 | |
people would, you know, would... | 1:45:23 | 1:45:25 | |
We'd get hundreds and hundreds of letters every week from people who | 1:45:25 | 1:45:28 | |
wanted to do these hideous acts on TV, | 1:45:28 | 1:45:30 | |
like lying in a bath full of pig poo, you know. | 1:45:30 | 1:45:33 | |
It's just extraordinary. But we would. | 1:45:33 | 1:45:35 | |
They knew what they were doing. They knew what they were doing. | 1:45:35 | 1:45:38 | |
It is still beguiling... | 1:45:38 | 1:45:40 | |
-Sorry! -If you've been through several decades, as I have, | 1:45:40 | 1:45:44 | |
how you can get politicians to end up eating insects on an island? | 1:45:44 | 1:45:48 | |
Don't you find it surprising that's happened, even in your short lifetime, Charlotte? | 1:45:49 | 1:45:52 | |
It is, no. It's a strange thing. | 1:45:52 | 1:45:56 | |
But then, | 1:45:56 | 1:45:57 | |
if you think of Attlee, when he does his interview, | 1:45:57 | 1:46:00 | |
compared to Jeremy Paxman, | 1:46:00 | 1:46:01 | |
that's the direction that the whole of the 20th century has taken. | 1:46:01 | 1:46:05 | |
And it is a brilliant way of reaching a huge cross-section of | 1:46:05 | 1:46:08 | |
the population. I mean, once you're broadcasting to above six million viewers, | 1:46:08 | 1:46:11 | |
as you are on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, | 1:46:11 | 1:46:14 | |
what a brilliant way to let them see politicians as they really are. | 1:46:14 | 1:46:18 | |
I don't know if they ever really put their political message across. | 1:46:18 | 1:46:21 | |
I think George Galloway went into the Big Brother house and I really | 1:46:21 | 1:46:25 | |
think he thought on some level he was going to change people's hearts | 1:46:25 | 1:46:28 | |
and minds. And he was soon in a spandex catsuit body top. | 1:46:28 | 1:46:33 | |
Do you think that this is a change or do you think we've always been like that, | 1:46:33 | 1:46:37 | |
and now we've got the opportunity to get it out? | 1:46:37 | 1:46:41 | |
Do you think the stiff upper lip was a mask for the big mouth open? | 1:46:41 | 1:46:45 | |
-What do you think? -Have we always been shameless exhibitionists at some level? | 1:46:45 | 1:46:49 | |
Exactly. That is the question. | 1:46:49 | 1:46:51 | |
I think that in every corner of every town there has always been shameless exhibitionists, | 1:46:51 | 1:46:57 | |
we just didn't used to shine a camera on them. | 1:46:57 | 1:47:00 | |
I keep thinking, | 1:47:00 | 1:47:02 | |
what was the golden bullet that from one moment people were covering | 1:47:02 | 1:47:06 | |
their bits on Big Brother, and then, is the golden bullet Geordie Shore? | 1:47:06 | 1:47:10 | |
Is that the words we are looking for, that suddenly people thought, "Hey, let's have sex on screen"? | 1:47:10 | 1:47:15 | |
I think we should stop here, really. | 1:47:15 | 1:47:17 | |
Thank you very much. | 1:47:17 | 1:47:18 | |
Elaine Bedell, Grace Dent, Charlie Parsons, thank you very much. | 1:47:18 | 1:47:22 | |
You wouldn't expect me to let two hours of television pass by without | 1:47:22 | 1:47:28 | |
talking about what television's done for the arts in this country. | 1:47:28 | 1:47:31 | |
Or indeed what the arts have done for television. | 1:47:31 | 1:47:33 | |
Television has made the arts accessible to millions in a way that | 1:47:33 | 1:47:37 | |
was never before possible in history. | 1:47:37 | 1:47:39 | |
Once again, right from the start, | 1:47:42 | 1:47:44 | |
producers and directors wrestled with how television could best | 1:47:44 | 1:47:48 | |
convey a range of art forms which had originally been created for | 1:47:48 | 1:47:51 | |
a different medium. | 1:47:51 | 1:47:53 | |
When Elgar was a boy he spent hours on his own | 1:47:53 | 1:47:55 | |
riding on his father's pony | 1:47:55 | 1:47:57 | |
along the ridges of the Malvern Hills. | 1:47:57 | 1:47:58 | |
Pointing cameras at the ballet might have missed the thrill of the live | 1:48:01 | 1:48:05 | |
experience, but it did allow close-ups, | 1:48:05 | 1:48:07 | |
not available to even the most expensive seats in the house. | 1:48:07 | 1:48:10 | |
A night of the opera, live or pre-recorded, | 1:48:15 | 1:48:17 | |
has enabled the finest voices of our age | 1:48:17 | 1:48:19 | |
to reach places they would never otherwise have reached. | 1:48:19 | 1:48:23 | |
An improvement in the technology of sound recording means you can close | 1:48:23 | 1:48:26 | |
your eyes and you might almost be in the auditorium. | 1:48:26 | 1:48:31 | |
SHE SINGS | 1:48:31 | 1:48:37 | |
I think it's a great work. | 1:48:52 | 1:48:54 | |
Dare I say? | 1:48:54 | 1:48:56 | |
-Quite. -Viewing great art may never be as real on the TV screen | 1:48:56 | 1:49:00 | |
as it is in real life. | 1:49:00 | 1:49:01 | |
But the chance to also hear about the motivations and | 1:49:01 | 1:49:05 | |
inspirations of the masters has made art | 1:49:05 | 1:49:07 | |
more meaningful to millions, and it continues to do so. | 1:49:07 | 1:49:11 | |
You make an image and it's changing all the time. | 1:49:12 | 1:49:15 | |
And then it's to do with your own instinct and sensibility, | 1:49:15 | 1:49:19 | |
which turns it one way or another. | 1:49:19 | 1:49:21 | |
We have been able to hear the written word of some of our greatest | 1:49:23 | 1:49:26 | |
authors. And television has occasionally allowed us something of a special | 1:49:26 | 1:49:29 | |
treat that is not available to readers, | 1:49:29 | 1:49:31 | |
of hearing them spoken in the voices of the writers themselves. | 1:49:31 | 1:49:34 | |
To Hay on Wye with Nick Hytner and Diana Wood. | 1:49:36 | 1:49:40 | |
The atmosphere is like a county show, | 1:49:40 | 1:49:42 | |
with literature standing in for husbandry. | 1:49:42 | 1:49:45 | |
And authors being led about like pedigree cattle. | 1:49:45 | 1:49:49 | |
Television has allowed us to experience the grandeur | 1:49:50 | 1:49:53 | |
of a 90-piece orchestra. | 1:49:53 | 1:49:54 | |
# When I said I needed you... # | 1:49:57 | 1:50:02 | |
And at the same time made popular music far more popular and far more | 1:50:05 | 1:50:09 | |
interesting by making it available to all of us. | 1:50:09 | 1:50:11 | |
# He'd like to come and meet us | 1:50:11 | 1:50:13 | |
# But he thinks he'd blow our mind... # | 1:50:13 | 1:50:16 | |
Art in all its forms is a spirit and conscience | 1:50:17 | 1:50:19 | |
of a civilised society. | 1:50:19 | 1:50:21 | |
And television has long been at the heart, | 1:50:22 | 1:50:24 | |
which has pumped it to every corner of our nation. | 1:50:24 | 1:50:26 | |
In city after city, town after town in this country, | 1:50:29 | 1:50:31 | |
literature festivals, music festivals, | 1:50:31 | 1:50:33 | |
documentary film festivals, it's burgeoning the arts. | 1:50:33 | 1:50:36 | |
People want more of it. | 1:50:36 | 1:50:38 | |
Because when you finish your day's work, what do you want to do? | 1:50:38 | 1:50:40 | |
You want to enjoy, you want to have pleasure in music, in dancing, | 1:50:40 | 1:50:44 | |
in reading, in looking at good stuff on television. | 1:50:44 | 1:50:47 | |
That's what you want to do. | 1:50:47 | 1:50:49 | |
Let's hope television carries on to play its part in ensuring that all | 1:50:54 | 1:50:57 | |
of us - not just the privileged few - | 1:50:57 | 1:50:59 | |
can continue to have access to our remarkable cultural life. | 1:50:59 | 1:51:02 | |
We've spent nearly two hours discussing the extraordinary cycle | 1:51:08 | 1:51:11 | |
of television over the last 60 years. | 1:51:11 | 1:51:13 | |
It's entertained, challenged, informed and maddened. | 1:51:13 | 1:51:16 | |
Whatever your view, it became a key part of our lives and helped to shape them, | 1:51:16 | 1:51:20 | |
but in a world that's altering before our eyes, | 1:51:20 | 1:51:23 | |
can television continue to have the same impact as it's had in the past? | 1:51:23 | 1:51:27 | |
With me for this final discussion are the executive producer of The Crown | 1:51:27 | 1:51:30 | |
and producer of some of television's most successful dramas Andy Harries, | 1:51:30 | 1:51:34 | |
and one of our foremost comedy producers, | 1:51:34 | 1:51:36 | |
whose credits include The Office and The IT Crowd, Ash Atalla. | 1:51:36 | 1:51:41 | |
Ash, to start with you, | 1:51:41 | 1:51:43 | |
do you think it can continue to have the same impact? | 1:51:43 | 1:51:46 | |
Um, not all at once, in a sense, it's become so fragmented, | 1:51:46 | 1:51:51 | |
I think the impact that television has will continue to be, | 1:51:51 | 1:51:55 | |
but it is cumulative, so it's smaller parts, but all over the place. | 1:51:55 | 1:51:59 | |
I think the days where one show - | 1:51:59 | 1:52:01 | |
we used to call it the water-cooler moment, | 1:52:01 | 1:52:03 | |
where people would go into work the next day and speak about a particular show | 1:52:03 | 1:52:06 | |
that was on the night before - I think those days are receding, | 1:52:06 | 1:52:10 | |
because the shows are becoming more fragmented. | 1:52:10 | 1:52:13 | |
So I think if you asked the people in this audience what shows they watch, | 1:52:13 | 1:52:17 | |
the range of shows would be enormous, | 1:52:17 | 1:52:20 | |
so it's hard to have an impact over that many shows. | 1:52:20 | 1:52:23 | |
But interesting, terrestrial television, the big channels, | 1:52:23 | 1:52:25 | |
are still holding big audiences - ten, 11 million sometimes, | 1:52:25 | 1:52:29 | |
13 million sometimes and so on. | 1:52:29 | 1:52:31 | |
Right, I think that's true in drama. | 1:52:31 | 1:52:33 | |
In my corner of the world, I think in comedy, I think, it's become, | 1:52:33 | 1:52:37 | |
there is now something for everyone | 1:52:37 | 1:52:39 | |
and gone are the days of family comedy viewing, | 1:52:39 | 1:52:41 | |
where you would sit down with your parents - | 1:52:41 | 1:52:43 | |
I guess it was Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Porridge - | 1:52:43 | 1:52:46 | |
those collective family moments in comedy have gone. | 1:52:46 | 1:52:50 | |
So what are the consequences of that? | 1:52:50 | 1:52:52 | |
Well, there's a concern, I think, that the market might collapse, | 1:52:52 | 1:52:57 | |
because there is something for everyone. | 1:52:57 | 1:52:59 | |
-What market? -I think people... There's a phrase, | 1:52:59 | 1:53:02 | |
peak television, that's going around a lot at the moment, | 1:53:02 | 1:53:05 | |
which is that there is so much of it - there's Netflix, | 1:53:05 | 1:53:07 | |
there's Amazon, there's the BBC, | 1:53:07 | 1:53:09 | |
they say for people like Andy and I, who make television, | 1:53:09 | 1:53:12 | |
there's never been a better time, but at the same time, | 1:53:12 | 1:53:15 | |
it's never been more competitive, | 1:53:15 | 1:53:17 | |
and so the concern is with it all becoming so niche | 1:53:17 | 1:53:21 | |
that the market might fall apart, ie, the model isn't sustainable. | 1:53:21 | 1:53:25 | |
You can't make that many shows over that many platforms. | 1:53:25 | 1:53:29 | |
Andy, Andy Harries, The Crown is a massive success on Netflix. | 1:53:29 | 1:53:33 | |
What does that show? | 1:53:33 | 1:53:35 | |
Is that a harbinger of what will happen next? | 1:53:35 | 1:53:37 | |
If so, what is going to happen next? | 1:53:37 | 1:53:39 | |
Is it a harbinger? Well, I think The Crown is a success for many reasons. | 1:53:39 | 1:53:43 | |
It's partly because it's about a family that the whole world is | 1:53:43 | 1:53:48 | |
interested in. It is also a brand, in the way the whole world | 1:53:48 | 1:53:51 | |
is conscious of the Royal Family, and for a company like Netflix, | 1:53:51 | 1:53:54 | |
who are rolling out around the world, | 1:53:54 | 1:53:57 | |
The Crown was a perfect purchase, if you like, because | 1:53:57 | 1:54:00 | |
you know, their promise to us is we will make your show, | 1:54:00 | 1:54:03 | |
we'll give you a lot of money and we'll open it up on the same night | 1:54:03 | 1:54:05 | |
in 180 countries worldwide. | 1:54:05 | 1:54:07 | |
I mean, it's an extraordinary concept for someone who has been | 1:54:07 | 1:54:10 | |
making television shows for 30-odd years, you know, | 1:54:10 | 1:54:14 | |
you'd have a show go out on BBC or ITV | 1:54:14 | 1:54:16 | |
and it would do jolly well and get | 1:54:16 | 1:54:18 | |
nice reviews or not, what have you, | 1:54:18 | 1:54:20 | |
but it's a wholly different sort of concept for a producer to be creating | 1:54:20 | 1:54:24 | |
a show that is going out right around the world simultaneously. | 1:54:24 | 1:54:28 | |
As a postscript, we started out by saying the biggest influence on | 1:54:28 | 1:54:31 | |
television in the early days was the coronation, | 1:54:31 | 1:54:34 | |
and we're ending it with the biggest thing in television at the moment is | 1:54:34 | 1:54:37 | |
The Crown. We can't seem to get rid of them, can we? | 1:54:37 | 1:54:39 | |
No, we can't get rid of them. | 1:54:39 | 1:54:40 | |
Well, you might argue they started it themselves, | 1:54:40 | 1:54:43 | |
because they took that decision | 1:54:43 | 1:54:44 | |
to allow the coronation to be filmed. | 1:54:44 | 1:54:47 | |
You might argue that the natural end of that story of the Royal Family | 1:54:47 | 1:54:51 | |
slowly opening up, allowing little bits more, | 1:54:51 | 1:54:54 | |
little documentaries here and there, in the end, | 1:54:54 | 1:54:56 | |
such is the fascination they've built around themselves and such is | 1:54:56 | 1:54:59 | |
the extraordinary stories they have, | 1:54:59 | 1:55:02 | |
that are a part of their history, | 1:55:02 | 1:55:05 | |
that a dramatisation is the inevitable result. | 1:55:05 | 1:55:09 | |
It's hugely costly and you can see it all in two evenings, as it were. | 1:55:09 | 1:55:15 | |
What effect is that having on your area of production? | 1:55:15 | 1:55:18 | |
Well, he's wearing a more expensive jacket than me! | 1:55:18 | 1:55:21 | |
You can see that. I think there's always been a truism about comedy | 1:55:22 | 1:55:26 | |
budgets, which is that, to make people laugh, it doesn't necessarily need to be expensive. | 1:55:26 | 1:55:30 | |
You don't need explosions, you don't need car chases. | 1:55:30 | 1:55:34 | |
You know, the economic model of comedy, you know, | 1:55:34 | 1:55:36 | |
effectively some of the best comedies are funny people saying | 1:55:36 | 1:55:39 | |
funny things in a room, in a prison, in an office, or whatever it is, | 1:55:39 | 1:55:43 | |
and that's not necessarily expensive. | 1:55:43 | 1:55:46 | |
But I think it's got to the point where it has become very much sort | 1:55:46 | 1:55:51 | |
of the poor relation of drama | 1:55:51 | 1:55:53 | |
and I think what's happening is broadcasters | 1:55:53 | 1:55:56 | |
are just having to take bigger bets. | 1:55:56 | 1:55:58 | |
You know, so to make an impact these days you have to take a really big | 1:55:58 | 1:56:02 | |
swing, you know, and let's not talk about the budget of The Crown, | 1:56:02 | 1:56:06 | |
but that would have been a huge bet that Netflix would have taken. | 1:56:06 | 1:56:09 | |
I think in comedy, | 1:56:09 | 1:56:11 | |
it's still lower risk, | 1:56:11 | 1:56:12 | |
but creatively, when you get a comedy wrong, it's a disaster. | 1:56:12 | 1:56:16 | |
-Really, when you get it wrong? -Yes. | 1:56:16 | 1:56:18 | |
But do you think there's more chance... I mean, we had BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, | 1:56:18 | 1:56:24 | |
and they held the ring for a long time - | 1:56:24 | 1:56:27 | |
60 years we're talking about. | 1:56:27 | 1:56:29 | |
Now, are you suggesting that time is gone and that template is over, | 1:56:29 | 1:56:34 | |
or just slowly eroded? | 1:56:34 | 1:56:36 | |
I don't think the time has gone, because as you said yourself, | 1:56:36 | 1:56:39 | |
Bake Offs and the like, and there are | 1:56:39 | 1:56:42 | |
key live sport and key talent shows and odd moments all bringing huge | 1:56:42 | 1:56:48 | |
ratings to terrestrial channels, and that will carry on for another ten, | 1:56:48 | 1:56:51 | |
15, maybe 20 years, but the balance has definitely changed. | 1:56:51 | 1:56:54 | |
I mean, it's an economic balance, | 1:56:54 | 1:56:56 | |
because if you want to watch Netflix or you want to watch Amazon, | 1:56:56 | 1:56:59 | |
you have to pay, so there's a certain amount of people who said "Thanks, I don't want to pay, | 1:56:59 | 1:57:02 | |
"I just want to watch BBC, which is still free, | 1:57:02 | 1:57:05 | |
"and ITV, which is still free, because of advertising," but... | 1:57:05 | 1:57:07 | |
People get more and more used to paying for things. | 1:57:07 | 1:57:10 | |
I mean, my generation would never pay to watch football, | 1:57:10 | 1:57:13 | |
but they do in droves now. | 1:57:13 | 1:57:14 | |
Yeah, I think... And actually the way people spend money, | 1:57:14 | 1:57:17 | |
something like £8 a month for Netflix actually represents very good value. | 1:57:17 | 1:57:21 | |
A cinema ticket is about £12 these days. | 1:57:21 | 1:57:25 | |
So it doesn't feel that expensive. | 1:57:25 | 1:57:26 | |
I think the key, to answer your question - have those days gone? - | 1:57:26 | 1:57:29 | |
if you imagine from your front room you can watch television from almost | 1:57:29 | 1:57:33 | |
any country in the world, and that is your competition, | 1:57:33 | 1:57:37 | |
for people like Andy and I, so you are now not just competing with ITV, | 1:57:37 | 1:57:41 | |
you're competing globally, | 1:57:41 | 1:57:43 | |
and I think what you are finding is mediocre shows are disappearing, | 1:57:43 | 1:57:47 | |
because people don't have to sit through them any more, | 1:57:47 | 1:57:50 | |
because you can watch - | 1:57:50 | 1:57:51 | |
at any point you should be able to watch something really good. | 1:57:51 | 1:57:54 | |
Do you think there has been a revolution in the way this country | 1:57:54 | 1:57:57 | |
has seen itself in the last 60 years? | 1:57:57 | 1:57:59 | |
You've got about four second to answer that, Andy. | 1:57:59 | 1:58:02 | |
That's a very difficult question to answer in four seconds! | 1:58:02 | 1:58:04 | |
-Has television? -Yes, the advent of television, | 1:58:04 | 1:58:08 | |
has it been this sort of revolutionary thing that I suggested it was two hours ago? | 1:58:08 | 1:58:11 | |
I think it's defined the last 30-40 years, I definitely do, | 1:58:11 | 1:58:16 | |
it both it reflects and leads, | 1:58:16 | 1:58:18 | |
but largely reflects, and... | 1:58:18 | 1:58:21 | |
Hugely - hugely revolutionary but also taken for granted, | 1:58:21 | 1:58:25 | |
because it's just there, but, yeah, it's made an enormous impact. | 1:58:25 | 1:58:29 | |
Thanks to you, Andy. Thanks to you, Ash. | 1:58:29 | 1:58:32 | |
Thanks to everybody who has taken part in this programme | 1:58:32 | 1:58:34 | |
and to you for tuning in, | 1:58:34 | 1:58:35 | |
and I hope you find much more that you want to watch as time goes by. | 1:58:35 | 1:58:39 | |
Goodnight. | 1:58:39 | 1:58:40 | |
# Bring me sunshine in your smile | 1:58:42 | 1:58:46 | |
# Bring me laughter all the while | 1:58:48 | 1:58:52 | |
# In this world where we live | 1:58:54 | 1:58:56 | |
# There should be more happiness | 1:58:56 | 1:58:59 | |
# So much joy you can give | 1:58:59 | 1:59:02 | |
# To each brand-new bright tomorrow | 1:59:02 | 1:59:05 | |
# Make me happy | 1:59:05 | 1:59:08 | |
# Through the years... # | 1:59:08 | 1:59:10 |