Infectious enthusiasm
James Delmgpole
My thesis this week is on how television suddenly got good again. I doubt it stands up. It probably has more to do with the fact that I haven't seen any telly in quite a while so coming back to it has heightened my appreciation of the dross that's on. Still, I'll have a go.
First, Cruikshank: 1,000 Ways of Getting Drunk in England (BBC 2, Saturday). I guessed that this was going to be good because programmes presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon usually are. I like his deadpan wackiness, his visual tricksiness — both very Meadesian, And I like the way he always manages to teach you dozens of amazing things you never knew about art.
George Cruikshank, for example. I'm sure we all know enough to nod sagely at the mention of his name: late-Georgian caricaturist; illustrator of Sketches By Boz. But did we know that most of the plot and characters in Oliver Twist were his invention? Or that George IV was so horrified by a cartoon of himself looking particularly fat and revolting that he bribed Cruikshank with £100 — easily a year's wages — not to do any more? Or that Cruikshank ended his days as one of the nation's leading temperance campaigners? Despite the fact that after his death, he left behind a secret mistress, ten children and a cellar full of booze?
The excuse for all this was the recent rediscovery in the bowels of the Tate of a massive anti-booze painting called The Worship Of Bacchus done by Cruikshank towards the end of his life. The Victorians managed to bury it, Graham-Dixon argued, because it told them a truth they would rather disguise with chocolate-box pictures of cute little dogs, saintly children and suchlike.
I'm not sure that I buy that line. After all, we're just starting to realise that the Victorians were rather more complex than the hypocritical, piano-leg-dressing prudes mischievously recalled by Lytton Strachey. The real reason it was ignored, I suspect, is that though it's jolly nicely done and terribly interesting and took three whole years to do it's more a piece of propaganda than a work of art. But I suppose GrahamDixon had to pretend it was a masterpiece to make a better story.
In fact, with his tendency towards lurid exaggeration and comical simplification he's a bit of an early Cruikshank himself. But when he can bring such lively insight to everything he describes, who cares?
From that programme he did about Monet's sunset at Le Havre, I gleaned more about Impressionism in one hour than I had in a lifetime. And by the end of his essay on Cruikshank — notably after the astonishing statistic that at any one time one in four Victorian Londoners was paralytically drunk — I had completely changed my view of the temperance movement. They weren't merely comical, tea-drinking prudes. They were actually vital social reformers with right on their side.
By way of amusing contrast let's segue into Jackass (MTV, Friday). This is a truly revolting and mindlessly puerile programme in which a group of twentysomething Americans led by Johnny Knoxville do incredibly stupid things like dive into paddling pools full of poo; shoot themselves with Taser guns to see how it feels; dress in flame-retardant suits, cover themselves in meat and then lie on a red-hot barbecue.
Unlike that vile 'I'll do anything to get on TV' section on The Word where members of the public had to do things like drink a pint of phlegm or snog a toothless granny, Jackass has a certain joie-de-vivre and style. The boys perform their hideous tasks with (almost) infectious enthusiasm. And I, for one, am exceedingly grateful that someone out there is finally trying to answer those strange questions that we've all sometimes asked ourselves.
Often, for example, while staring transfixed into the latrine pits of Glastonbury I have wondered what it would be like to fall in. Now, thanks to the gallant efforts of Knoxville — who climbed beneath a foul Portaloo which was then turned upside down so that the contents fell on his head — I have a much clearer idea. Another thing I've sometimes wondered is what it would be like if while you were trying to scare yourself by teetering close to the edge of the Grand Canyon a gust of wind suddenly blew you over the edge. But I guess they won't do that until they start running Out of less harmful stunt ideas. Like the one in the next series where a man gets his arse-cheeks stapled together with an iron bar. I can't wait.
See what I mean about TV getting better? Well, no, you probably don't. Just one more thing. I very much enjoyed the first episode of the new documentary series about Churchill, De Gaulle and Roosevelt — Allies At War (BBC 2, Tuesday) — and it's always good to be reminded what an eternal debt the French owe us in helping them gloss over the extent of their cowardice and collaboration. But I do wish it would stop filling in the bits where it doesn't have relevant footage with shots of actors dressed as the key players. It's quite unnecessary and very distracting.
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