Episode 14 Points of View

Good afternoon and welcome to Points Of View.

Saturday nights have now settled in for the winter

with the fireside pairing of Strictly Come Dancing and Merlin.

But their appearance has meant the departure of Doctor Who,

a confusingly early departure for some.

With many listings magazines

describing Doctor Who's swift September outing

as episode one to five of 13,

some fans were hoodwinked into thinking the Doctor would be making

weekly house calls right up until the end of November.

But the Doctor has actually caught the Americanism

of arriving in seasons.

So while this block of stories was made in one go,

it is being shown in short bursts.

The current run saw plots centre on Amy, angels, cowboys,

-cubes, Daleks and dinosaurs.

-Ooh!

So that's A to D covered.

And it would appear to be a case of,

"Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet."

The Doctor's absence, though irritating, is only temporary.

But total confusion surrounded the launch of Merlin.

A dramatic trailer had the desired effect,

leading many viewers to make a date in their diary,

except there wasn't a date.

Merlin, starts Saturday the 8th of October on BBC One and BBC One HD.

There is no Saturday the 8th of October until 2016.

Yesterday was Saturday the 6th of October.

And we thought the fictional stuff was limited to the programme!

So it would appear there is somebody at the BBC whose job is to type

the correct date over the top of a clip from Merlin and they didn't manage it.

Luckily, the cast and crew have been paying more attention to detail.

CASTS SPELL IN OLD ENGLISH

What happened?

I think those people were definitely rearing their heads in the beginning

and saying, "This is not how it's supposed to be."

But then, I think, having given them time to watch the series

and see what we've done with it,

I think they actually quite like it now,

and they've accepted that it's not trying to be historically accurate.

And after all, it is just a story.

It's a tale about magic and all that kind of stuff, and sorcery and dragons.

And so, in a way, I think there is scope to change it up a bit

and make it more a bit more kind of appeal to a modern audience.

A lot's changed. Obviously I'm Queen now, which is quite exciting!

And, yes, some really exciting stories.

# No-one's going to take me alive... #

I'll have some fond memories of the show when we finish. And that's...

I can be proud of them.

Who?

We need to rest.

The challenge is to not let it go stale.

I think as soon as it does that, you've got to stop.

So that was history, if a rather whimsical version.

And next it is double chemistry for you.

As with many complex academic studies,

Bluffer's Guides have been issued to help those struggling.

And Top Gear team-mate James May is delivering the TV equivalent

of the Bluffer's Guide with his Things You Need To Know series.

But, sadly, the chemistry episode did not earn him a gold star.

As a chemistry teacher, I was looking forward to

James May's Things You Need To Know About Chemistry.

I was extremely disappointed, however,

to see a completely incorrect structure for ethanoic acid

shown in a graphic more than once.

Carbon should only have four bonds, whereas this clearly shows five.

The correct structure should be this.

Errors in chemical formulae were featured throughout the programme.

In an animation of the periodic table,

the terms mass number and atomic number were completely confused.

These are not the same thing.

Chemistry is an area students find very difficult.

I feel this programme fed many misconceptions

that exist in the subject.

It was absolutely chock-full of errors.

In the first two minutes I counted at least five,

the worst of which was probably the structure of vinegar,

or actually acetic acid, that was shown,

which appeared to have a carbon with five bonds coming off it.

Now, this may seem like nitpicking, but any A-level chemistry student

should know that carbons always have four bonds.

It's really a fundamental error.

It's is rather like getting the date of the Battle of Hastings wrong

in a history programme.

It's just not acceptable. Really, this could have all been overcome

if someone had just fact-checked the programme correctly.

Mark and Kate, you have both got a future in film making

if the chemistry career evaporates. But what of this carbon clanger?

We had a consultant who was a chemistry professor,

who was going over all of the scripts

and also supplied those formulas and those visuals to the animators.

But as you suggested, the animators themselves

didn't quite concentrate as hard as they should have done

on absolutely rendering accurately the images that they'd been given.

And what we didn't do is we didn't get the consultant

to double-check the pictures once the programme had been completed.

A real mistake, and something we'll make sure doesn't happen again.

But I should say that in that context, it's really important for us

to be getting things right. But on the other hand, it might sound odd,

but actually we're really grateful

to all of the people who wrote in and pointed out the errors to us,

because we're always wanting to get things right

and we always welcome everything that the audience as to say.

If they've got any comments or criticisms,

they should really understand that we're listening and we'll do

whatever we can to correct anything that comes up.

So don't use James May's carbon emissions

to bluff your way in chemistry - they might blow up in your face.

Oh, and regarding fact-checking,

the shop floor costume drama The Paradise

has given one of our viewers a very un-heavenly feeling.

Watch closely here

and see if you can guess what the complaint is about.

Oh, so many temptations. I can't make up my mind.

Miss Audrey, where's the girl who helped me last time I was here?

Ah, Denise. Denise, make yourself visible.

-You MUST have her, Jocelyn. She is quite something.

-How may I help you, ladies?

I feel I could purchase everything I lay my eyes on.

Isn't it wonderful?

That's a very good spot, Dee,

but perhaps it's a more understandable oversight

than the chemistry clanger.

Unless, of course, you are a professional archivist

or genealogist, like the experts on Who Do You Think You Are?

They stand accused of working part-time this series

and only researching back for one generation.

So have the Who Do team thrown away their really big long shovels

and swapped them with tiny trowels? Are they not digging deep enough?

It's unfortunate that both stories

that featured World War II

were transmitted fairly close together in this series,

but what you'll find is for the rest of the run,

we've got stories that go back three or four, five generations into the 19th century

and, in fact, one story set virtually in the 17th century.

What we try and do is pick the most compelling and interesting stories to tell

from that person's family tree.

So Who Do You Think You Are will be investigating family trees

beyond the World Wars in future, then.

But it seems much of the rest of the BBC is still caught up

in something of a wartime obsession.

That was a comprehensive list, Jack,

but you've actually missed out BBC Four's offerings -

The Nazis: A Warning From History and Surviving Hitler.

Still, I take your point.

Some subjects are revisited time and again by programme makers.

Not only that, viewers often tell us

they see the same faces presenting those programs time and again

and maybe there could be some fresh thinking there?

I was out with my friend and we were thinking about presenting,

both radio and TV,

and we were asking why we don't see new people on

and we wondered whether that was pay or whether it was experience,

or whether the audience didn't know them,

and we wanted to find out if there was something that could be done about that.

Our strategy in Knowledge is to maintain a really vibrant mix

of established and new talent all the time.

What we try and do is deliver to audiences

people that they love and know and respect and have cherished,

but also introduce new takes, new insights,

new knowledge, I suppose.

There was a recent BBC Four programme over the summer

and it included a man called Dr James Fox,

who gave a presentation about blue, white and gold in terms of art

and he was really enthusiastic,

clearly very knowledgeable, and it was a great programme.

The unique thing about blue is that it is all around us

and yet somehow it feels for ever out of reach.

He first came to our notice through his students, actually.

He's a Cambridge art historian and his students wrote in and said

what a fabulous TV presenter they thought he would be.

So you can really understand why people loved this substance so much.

I do recognise that not every expert is particularly good in front of the camera.

Licence fee payers' money should be used on bringing on new talent,

it shouldn't be about exorbitantly paying people

who think they're famous enough to charge for it or demand it.

It's really easy for budding presenters to send us

a bit of tape or go on to the commissioning website

and send us a link with something they've shot themselves.

It's quite a big ask, being good at being both passionate

and having something genuinely new and different to say,

and so I think combining that approach, which we're very open to,

with some of the more expert views held here in Knowledge Commissioning

about what works in terms of television presenting,

I think that probably provides quite a good balance for the audience.

And active hunt for new presenters in some programme areas, then.

Get your show reels in!

But if you'd rather it was just your comments that appear on the air, write to us.

You're also more than welcome to email. Here's the address for that.

Or you can jump on the message board, which is at...

And you could phone us too.

The number is charged as a local rate call from a landline.

Now, many of you wrote some weeks ago at the news of the death

of the antiques expert David Barby from Bargain Hunt,

complaining that the BBC hadn't really aired any form of tribute programme

and contacted us again this week when your calls were heard

and a touching celebration of his work was broadcast.

David Barby, no longer with us but still loved. Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd