Television
Channel hopping
James Delmgpole
Have you ever discovered how much better life is if you don't watch any television? I've been experimenting with this recently and I can really recommend it. Not only does it make your evening stretch much further, but it guarantees you've time for a lengthy bath and a good long read in bed, with none of that 'Oh my God it's already half-eleven and I haven't even done my teeth yet' panic which so often follows a night's vegging in front of the box.
Normal people, of course, can take this no-TV option any time they like. But if you're a TV critic, it's a bit more difficult, First, your employer kind of expects you to have at least a passing acquaintance with your alleged speciality. Second, there's money in it. Suppose a tabloid newspaper were to ring you up offering £1,200 for a by-lunchtime think-piece on whither Big Brother? or wherefore Brass Eye? If you hadn't seem them, you'd be kicking yourself, wouldn't you?
And rightly so, for one of the prices you must pay for being a glib media commentator is having to anticipate what trash the chattering classes are going to be chattering about, and make absolutely bloody sure you've seen it and got a view on it. Otherwise your children will have to go to the local state school where they'll learn nothing hut ebonies, teeth-sucking and spraypainting, come home with South London accents, fail their exams, take drugs, drop Out, steal all your money, burn your house down and then kill you.
Anyway, even if I'd wanted to give up TV my plan would have been ruined when one of those irksome people from NTL talked me into paying a fiver extra for their all the channels' package. Ever since, I've been trying to get my money's worth.
'Slow down!' grumbles the wife, as I flick through the channels. (Like most females, she is incapable of absorbing any information from a screen at speed.) 'Look, do you want to find something to watch or not?' I say. But I can't read what the programmes are,' she says. 'Well, I can,' I say. 'Yes, but I want something that I'll enjoy too,' she says, grabbing the controls and doing just what I've been doing, only five times more slowly.
Eventually she says, 'I hate this. There's nothing on.' I say, 'There's always something
on. What about that war documentary you went past?' She says, But it's half way through.' I say, 'That's what cable's like.' She says, 'But I like programmes you can look up and watch from the beginning,' I say, 'I do too. But this is a different experience. You end up discovering stuff you would never have discovered. Like that Face To Face.'
This, I think, was the only occasion when either of us benefited from having digital TV. One night we accidentally channelhopped onto a black-and-white close-up of an old man being asked exceedingly blunt questions by a slightly younger man. We eventually worked out that they must be Lord Reith and John Freeman. For the first time I realised that those old bores who bang on about the Golden Age of television might have a point.
Actually, there is at least one other reason for having digital TV: you get to see the third series of The Sopranos (E4. Sunday) early. I'd better not reveal too much because most of you won't be catching up with it till it appears on Channel 4 in the autumn. But I can't resist raving about it just a little bit because it is so damned brilliant, particularly the third episode which I caught on video last night, when . . . if you don't want to know what happens, look away now.
Right, it's the episode when Christopher finally gets to be a made guy and messes up his new job royally, while Meadow falls out with Tony, scheming Janice is quite fabulously vile, Anthony Jr redeems himself on the football field and, best of all, we finally discover the psychological source for Tony's panic attacks. I ended thinking, 'Blimey, there were enough juicy storylines there to fill a whole mini-series but The Sopranos managed to dish them all up in the space of one hour. Truly, Mr Chase, with your narrative complexity you are spoiling us.'
That Brass Eye: what did I think? What I thought is, I was quite surprised by all the fuss. I mean, it's not as if Chris Morris is a new satirical phenomenon, His Brass Eye series four years ago — the one when he persuaded various gullible rentaquote MPs and celebrities to rail against a 'made up' devil drug called Cake; the one where stars like Paul Daniels were persuaded to campaign on behalf of an elephant in a German zoo whose trunk was stuck up its own bottom — used exactly the same techniques and warped humour deployed in his paedophile programme. Sure he can be gratuitously offensive, sure he's not always as hilarious as he thinks he is, but he's still the cleverest, funniest most effective satirist of his generation. The menace we should worry about isn't Morris: it's the baying, salivating mobs, the hysterical tabloids, and nannying, busybody MPs who would try to stop him_ I do hope he covers Race next.
in last week's television review, John Wells was mistakenly named as the actor playing John Fuller-Carp in Chambers; it should, of course, have been John Bird.
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