Connecting with Culture - TV

Spooks

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:03:36 +0000

Spooks is back – and with a bang. The BBC’s slick and stylish spy series returned this week, only for one of its main characters to be blown out of the show by a car bomb. It’s never been quite as good since the utterly mesmerising Tom Quinn took early retirement from MI5, but this week’s episodes have proved that Spooks remains compelling viewing.

The success of Spooks can be attributed to a number of factors – the writing, acting, camera work, film editing and suspense-inducing soundtrack, to name but a few. Each of these we can rightly celebrate as examples of excellence in their field. Spooks, however, is greater than the sum of its parts, and as such has established itself as the most patriotic show on television. Arguably this, more than anything else, is the secret of its success.

Pass It On

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:54:09 +0100

Jamie Oliver is a chef with a big appetite for change. ‘It’s Great Britain! It’s 2008!’ he despairs, ‘I’ve been to Soweto and I’ve seen AIDS orphans eating better than this.’ His new series, Jamie’s Ministry of Food, showcases his determination to transform this situation.

There has already been remarkable transformation. The once ‘naked chef’ has radically impacted the lives of several people, including a woman who ate more than 70 packets of crisps a week; the miner, who deemed cooking to be ‘women’s work’; and the mum who fed her family takeaways so frequently that her young daughter thought kebabs grew in the ground. Lest we underestimate the power and significance of food, learning to cook has transformed the lives of these people, giving them not only new skills but also new confidence and changed relationships.

The Secret Millionaire

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:39:46 +0100

Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire is TV that can legitimately claim to change lives. Each programme follows a millionaire as they go ‘undercover’ for two weeks, to experience life on benefit in a deprived area. During their fortnight, the millionaire seeks out volunteer opportunities with local community projects, with a view to identifying worthy causes to which they can donate cash. Each programme concludes with the millionaire returning to selected projects to express thanks and admiration, and then to reveal their true identity and hand over a cheque, often for several thousand pounds.

Dad’s Army

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:07:51 +0100

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Dad’s Army. It is testimony to the enduring appeal of the show that BBC2 has given over its entire evening schedule this Saturday to Dad’s Army-related programming, and that BBC1 will broadcast a special celebration on Sunday evening. And it’s not just those who saw it first time round who are fans – my 9-year-old son has been beside himself with laughter whenever he’s caught one of the recent run of repeats.

The Body in the Library

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:10:40 +0100

There is little that we like better, it seems, than settling down to a cosy murder.

A quick body count suggests that this is how many of us unwind – this week alone we can tune into over forty-five hours of detective drama on terrestrial television. Six of the current top ten bestselling hardbacks, and four of the top ten paperbacks, are concerned with one form of crime or another.

But why our continued attraction to, and fascination with, the ever growing corpus of the corpse? After all, despite infinite variety in locations, characters, victims, and modes of dispatch, the essential plot remains the same each time. Regardless of whether it is Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, or Inspectors Morse or Barnaby on the case, and of whatever particular crime is committed, the culprit will eventually – and inevitably – be discovered.

The world of detective fiction is a curious blend of the horrific and the fantastic. It’s a world where violence can break out at any time, and where anyone, even the least expected (perhaps especially the least expected), may have premeditated murder. Interestingly, though, it’s also a world that displays a strange form of optimism; perhaps we could even characterise it as hope. As the acclaimed crime writer, P.D. James, once said, ‘what the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order’. The deep-seated hope that these narratives continue to articulate is that truth cannot be suppressed, that evil will be thwarted, and that things happen for a reason, a reason that, even if not always understood, can at least be explained.

But this I know…

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:33:41 +0100

I must be one of the few westerners who has never watched an episode of ER. However, I recently received an email with a YouTube link to an excerpt from the latest (14th!) season.

The clip introduces a cancer and guilt-riddled ex-prison doctor (Truman) being counselled by a gentle, sincere and compassionate chaplain (Julia). One of Truman’s roles as a prison doctor had been administering lethal injections to convicted murderers. He relates how one of them was later found to have been framed for his crime, and how he believes he ignored God’s attempt to prevent him from killing an innocent man.

You’re Hired!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:04:16 +0100

I sacked Simon Smith. Yep, I gave this week’s hapless contestant on The Apprentice his marching orders. OK, the TV evidence is that it was the lovable epitome of all things shrewd and opportunist, Sir Alan Sugar, who fired him – but at least I was there to back up his decision. As part of the studio audience for The Apprentice: You’re Fired!, the follow-up show that interviews each week’s victim, I got to wave my red card at Simon when the mob was asked how we’d have handled him.

cloverfield

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:55:59 +0000

I wonder if, before switching on the nightlight and retiring downstairs, the parents of the young J J Abrams told him there were monsters not only under the bed but also under the floorboards and clutching the limbs of the trees outside his window. The creative force behind TV’s Alias and Lost, Mission Impossible 3 and the current box-office hit Cloverfield has an unnerving knack for making you feel that, just off camera, just out of sight, some colossal, terrible force is about to make its presence known and change the way you think about life forever.

heroes

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:52:45 +0000

I’m sure it’s a consolation to all of us to learn that if we want to clamber up skyscrapers like Spiderman, or express our road rage not with rude hand signals but with the heat-ray vision of Superman, help is at hand. No longer do we have to wait for wizards, radioactive spiders or freak gamma-bomb accidents to bestow on us such unique abilities. No, nature will take its course.

strictly come dancing

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:19:48 +0000

‘It’s nice to see you, to see you nice!’ Thus Bruce Forsyth welcomes my family and me, and millions of others each week, to the Saturday evening televisual feast that is Strictly Come Dancing. Who could have predicted, after the demise of Come Dancing in 1998, that SCD – now in its fifth series – would prove such a triumph?

big brother 8

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:07:11 +0100

Big Brother is still being watched by you. Well, perhaps not by you - few Christian people are willing to admit to this particular vice - but by plenty of other voyeurs. Over eight million watched on the opening night, in fact.

royle connections

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:29:20 +0000

Families have often been bound together by the various traditions they observe. It could be playing Ker-plunk on Sunday afternoons, or the annual camping holiday in a damp corner of Cornwall. It could be the timing of when the presents are opened on Christmas Day.

the west wing

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:10:11 +0100

Literature lovers are ‘well-read’. Film experts are ‘cineastes’. TV fans are ‘addicts’ – unless they happen to watch The West Wing, the celebrated drama about the machinations of the White House, to which a new leader is elected on More4 next week.

the apprentice

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 13:27:08 +0000

It’s amazing how much creativity, determination and courage can be unlocked when people try to ‘make it’ in life.

You can see it on The Apprentice - the TV docudrama in which 12 promising young people work with, and compete against, each other for the ultimate prize of becoming an apprentice to Sir Alan Sugar.

Eastenders

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:00:50 +0000

Happy birthday, Eastenders: 21 this week. And while we might raise a high-brow eye-brow at the idea of celebrating the birth of a ‘soap’, we also have to admit that the genre plays a significant role in popular culture today – for good or bad.