Television
Summer's over
Wendy Cope
Things went a bit wrong on Sunday. The day began well, with me at my desk bright and early, too intent on work to glance at the Sunday papers. At 10.30 a.m., judging the hour to be suitably civilised, I made a telephone call and was surprised to learn that the recipient was in the middle of breakfast. After another two hours' work, I ate a light, early lunch, skimmed the books pages to see if there was anything I didn't want to miss, set the video to record some programmes I might be able to write about, and went out to visit my mother. Uncharacteristically, she was behind schedule, still serving lunch to her guests at 2.50 p.m. It was another hour before the penny dropped. We all had a good laugh, then I remembered the video. Hell. Things like this do not happen to John Naughton. In the circumstances there is nothing for it but to see how much mileage one can get from a silly mistake. Something under 200 words so far.
Actually you probably haven't missed much. Part of the plan, since I am trying to improve my German, was to watch Deutsch direkt! (BBC 1) and review it, thereby killing two Vogel with one Stein. Then I thought I might look at The Clothes Show (BBC 1) and maybe sneer at the item on the Bride of the Year, which wouldn't have been very nice of me. Instead of Deutsch direkt! the machine had netted the spelling programme I covered last week and instead of The Clothes Show there was Motor Show '88, which I was most certain- ly not going to watch.
However, I got back in time to fulfil the last part of the plan, viz a dutiful viewing of yet another of those long, long television programmes about television, The Media Show Special — TV 2000 (Channel 4). Long, long television programmes about television are such a drag that sometimes not even the critics can be bothered with them. But of course (stay your hand before you write that letter to the editor) it's all very important. People are always asking me intelligent questions about cable and satellite and it seemed a good opportunity to become a little more clued up on these matters. The fun bits of the programme comprised snippets of the kind of thing we may, perhaps, expect. Most of the clips were American. On a phone-in called Artistic Cosmetic Dentistry, a strikingly untelegenic dentist assured viewers that their mouths 'could look as beautiful as these lovely flowers'. Another show fea- tured a psychic numerologist, who had news of the election result: 'Dukakis is going to win. But Bush is more than likely going to lose, based on destiny and karma.' Then there was Love and Marriage, 'a programme about intimate relationships', with talk about the first dimension of self-transcending caring. All this was prob- ably meant to serve as a dire warning to the British viewer. However, in small doses it's so wonderful one can't get enough of it.
There were also some less engaging clips — French and Italian soft porn, American violence (though the nastiest extract of all was the scene from I, Claudius where Caligula murders his pregnant sister). What did the experts think? Most of the television people were afraid that the rampant profit motive would drive out quality programmes. But the point was made — by Greg Dyke of LWT among others — that our television has always been better than everyone else's and Brit- ish viewers may vote with their tuning knobs against a drastic fall in standards: Consulted in some rather hurried inter- views, several British viewers confirmed that they didn't want to watch rubbish.
Kate Adie said that in the States televi- sion is not worth talking about, it's just `moving wallpaper for morons'. What I really want from television is upmarket moving wallpaper to enjoy when tiredness has temporarily made a moron of me. It can't be long — can it? — before they bring back LA Law.
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