Episode 11 Points of View

Good afternoon, and welcome to a new series of Points Of View.

Great to be back with you after, well, quite a summer for us all.

It's been a "proud to be British" time,

with the BBC in the midst of it.

Sure, there was a bit of a patchy start.

Dare I mention the Jubilee river pageant?

Sounds of heads rolling upstairs.

But then came Wimbledon, the test bed

for whizzy, interactive, multi-platform programming

that helped make the Olympics coverage the most watched ever.

And it was good, wasn't it? So, at the end of it all,

there was a chance for a big British knees-up,

and the last event of the summer programme

happened to present us with the perfect opportunity,

the Last Night of the Proms.

ALL: Rule Britannia!

# Britannia rules the waves

# Britons never, never, never

# Shall be slaves. #

Now, here's a thought - not mine, but Mike Taylor's.

Mike is a viewer, but he's also a listener.

He remembers when the American medical drama ER

became the first to use "wobblecam",

hoping the unsteady shots would lend the shoot

an air of emergency, panic and spontaneity.

And now he thinks sound men are becoming similarly unbalanced

in an attempt to achieve the same effect.

I contacted Points Of View

essentially because I was getting exasperated

at the quality of sound at the start of the Olympics.

The presenters were terrific,

the coverage was terrific,

the athletes were terrific.

I noticed very few false starts.

But I noticed a lot of false starts with the sound.

It would appear that it may be

a conscious decision by the director

to leave the general noise louder than the people

speaking to camera, to create an environment.

-LOUD CROWD NOISE

-Representing Great Britain...

Anthony Joshua!

In real life, I'd walk away from that situation

so that I could go somewhere I could hear.

All I can do is switch it off or change channels

or press the mute button.

It would appear that, in order to create atmosphere on many programmes

where there are large audiences,

the director is happy to have the sound of the audience so loud

that you cannot hear what is being said.

LOUD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Tonight, either Harry and Aliona, Jason and Kristina...

And in fact, it would appear that the people who are speaking to camera

are fully aware of that,

and they will speak to camera over the sound of the audience,

knowing that they're not being heard.

I do believe that the directors are trying to, er,

enhance the atmosphere and indeed, perhaps, hype it up.

An interesting theory, Mike. So, the next live event,

we shall press the Points Of View stethoscope to the loudspeaker.

But back to the summer,

and when we weren't jumping off the sofa

to cheer on Hoy or Weir or Ennis or Farah,

television drama had us glued to our seats.

The out-and-out favourite with viewers was the Paralympic biopic

The Best of Men,

but Parade's End ticked the costume-drama box.

Who are his people?

His father was a shipping clerk in Edinburgh.

Well!

And The Accused provided a new spin on the justice system,

as has the current Good Cop.

In the act of doing good...

..of doing his job...

..his duty...

..he was committed...

..fearless...

..and fair.

This...

is the man...

..I will remember.

BBC comedy has been making a splash recently with the controversy

surrounding Citizen Khan,

but while that may have captured the headlines,

there have been plenty of other new and returning comic titles to watch.

Last week alone saw The Thick Of It on BBC Two...

I think I'd better end this call now in case I get a brain tumour.

Precisely. I'd lose all my lovely, thick hair.

..and BBC Three is attempting wall-to-wall laughs

with The Revolution Will Be Televised and Bad Education.

Why does everyone think I was bullied?

-Your girlie run.

-The way you throw.

-Your Facebook wall.

-I wasn't bullied, all right?

-But are they hitting the spot?

So not exactly thigh-slappingly good, then.

And I employ that new adjective "thigh-slappingly"

in honour of one of our message-boarders, WJR,

who's created a new game for One Show viewers,

which is Spot The Thigh Slap.

You might enjoy this game. Start counting.

Thanks ever so much.

-Come on, then. Clear to go.

-See? It all came from the flannel.

-Bye-bye!

We'll see you tomorrow at seven. Bye.

Well, anyway, we'll move on.

Right, let's dive headlong

into what we might term Manliness And Mechanics.

That is not its official title,

but BBC Two certainly seemed to be conspiring

to win viewers with a passion for looking under bonnets

and risking life and limb, and preferably at the same time.

It is a testosterone-fuelled line-up they've got on,

one after the other on Sunday nights on BBC2.

Richard Hammond tries his hand at lumberjacking,

with the use of massive logging machines.

I have chopped down a tree!

This is nerve wracking, I cannot describe the feeling of...

That is a whole tree above me there. Yes!

China On Four Wheels investigates the effect that the booming

motor industry is having.

Enthusiasts: a wealth of knowledge on their favourite topic,

and a passion to match.

We love them here, because they keep programme makers straight.

Just like the Whoists - Doctor Who fans

have had a roller-coaster reaction

to the treatment of the Timelord recently.

The transition from David Tennant to Matt Smith was far from smooth,

the writing has been slated for being both too simplistic

and too clever, which is a worthy feat in itself.

Although the new series launched to universal acclaim last week,

it would appear the honeymoon period is already over.

How do you start a triceratops?!

-There they are.

-I know, I saw them before you.

Tricey, fetch!

Ha-ha!

Another series that has gone through something of a regeneration

is Waterloo Road.

The production of this school-room drama has moved from Rochdale

to Greenock in Scotland,

and some of the cast have stayed - including some of the pupils,

but you spotted that 241 miles seems a bit generous for a catchment area.

Waterloo Road is a street that exists in every town

up and down the UK, so Rochdale was thought of as a confident home

for Waterloo Road, because it could speak to everyone across the UK.

There comes a point with every show

when it has been going seven or eight years that it needs

a shot of adrenaline, and I think a move can really provide that.

Cheese!

Moving Waterloo Road to Scotland was part of BBC's ongoing commitment

to establishing a really strong production base in Scotland.

235, take one.

There was also a lot of editorial and creative opportunities,

that we suddenly had new sets, like the schoolhouse.

I thought that was a cracking idea, because it opens up

all sorts of possibilities for Grantly and Maggie, and the kids.

It is like an Aladdin's cave of stories in there. It's great.

Why did I sign up for this?

The writers have been very clever, the writers and producers,

the way the story fits the move, and it's all dovetailed in very nicely.

We already had storylines that the audience had invested in,

with existing characters, and we felt really strongly we had to follow through on those.

The head teacher is a teacher within our fictional Waterloo Road

that will always go above and beyond for those kids that he feels

a special responsibility to.

Clean slate.

I won't mess it up.

It is a hugely imaginative story to bring those pupils up to Scotland

under Michael's vision, but I think in terms of the reality

of the situation, they are the minority.

I think the drama has to have dramatic truth to it, and I think

that we work hard on Waterloo Road to try to make sure the storylines

do have a basis of truth, but if the story works emotionally

for an audience and makes sense for those characters, there is a certain

amount of flexibility in terms of what we will and won't believe.

It is a leap of imagination,

but I think it is one that we could say could happen,

and I think that is what good drama is about, could it happen?

Yes, it can. So why don't we try it?

There has also been another move for Waterloo Road from Wednesday night to Thursday.

Programme makers are a creative bunch.

Dry statistics do not do it for them.

For example, why would you say 180,000 people

when you can say a crowd big enough to fill Wembley Stadium twice over?

Why say 235 metres when you can say the height of Canary Wharf?

Equivalent to 53 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

They weigh the same as a packet of crisps.

It is the height of two double-decker buses

and long enough to hold 21 double-deckers parked end-to-end.

Each the size of a football pitch.

Why? They do it, Rob Burdon, just to annoy you.

Can they simply say it is so many metres, yards, long, wide or high?

Or that it weighs so many pounds, kilos or tonnes?

These methods of measure are standardised, Imperial or metric,

and are amazingly easy to understand and visualise.

At least with the Olympic commentary,

no-one referred to the 100m race as being

as long as so many double-decker buses, so there is hope.

That film was shot by Rob himself and sent in.

So much more fun than writing a letter.

You can try that yourself for us.

The old-fashioned methods are still available, just write to...

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In two weeks' time, we'll be speaking to

the chief policeman of the BBC,

the chairman of the BBC trust, Lord Patten.

Do get your questions in for him. Goodbye.