Raymond Briggs is the English Hergé. Actually, that’s probably a little unfair to both Tintin and the flying Snowman. Briggs is more like a provincial English version of Japanese manga: in place of pornographic nihilism, he gives us quiet, suburban anarchy. Unlike the Belgians, Americans and Japanese, the British have no heritage of adult comic books. But we do have a rich history of social caricature, and Briggs manages to be a touch Hogarth and a bit Beano. When Fungus the Bogeyman appeared in the 1970s, he was a brilliant revelation. It was a simple and disgusting children’s story, but also a gentle and observant adult commentary in the manner of Swift and Carroll, all grown in an earthy mulch of loads of really good bad puns.
Over the years, there have been some desultory attempts to turn Fungus into a film. Terry Gilliam, the champion of forlorn fantasy projects, was said to have been interested, along with other former Pythons, but it came to naught. Paul McCartney was moved to write Bogey Music, but happily we were spared the Bogeyman with Wings. Now, here is the BBC version, Fungus the Bogeyman (Sunday, BBC1), in collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is half live action, half hyperrealistic animation.
The first thing you will have noticed is that it isn’t funny. The book was very funny, but on television Fungus’s home life is a plot from EastEnders, and the above-ground humans are a wan family of surface-wipers fronted by Fay Ripley and Martin Clunes. They are not in the book, which didn’t really have a plot — it was more a bogeypalogical look at fungus life.
I watched the first episode with my 11-year-old son. He spent most of it looking perplexed. “What was that supposed to be about?” he asked as the credits rolled. And here is the smelly crux of Fungus’s problem: it’s come too late, missed its moment by a decade or two. The book is not familiar to today’s children, and the television version neither reinvents Fungus for them nor sets out the narrative or topography. It didn’t explain what the point of it all was, a question asked by Fungus as well as my boy. Seeing that it is not funny, what is it supposed to be: adventure, allegory or public-information film? Most damningly, Fungus’s filthy clothes have been stolen by the brasher, bigger, greener Shrek, a much funnier, broader screen character.
The BBC seems to be having doubts about this pricey project. It was due to be shown last year, but was dropped into the dead water before the surf of holiday specials. You would have thought that after the schlock success of The Snowman, Fungus would have made a perfect Christmas show, but they sensed this one wasn’t going to fly. So it crept on with minimal fanfare to begin its slow bogey around the extremities of the world — children’s television trying to make back its considerable budget. It’s a shame, because with a better script and some coarser jokes, Fungus might well have done the dirty.
Actors complain that reality television and exploitation documentaries are killing off their habitat, outside soaps and the occasional sitcom. There are precious few roles for actors on television, and the parts that do come up tend to go to the same repertory, the same faces. For instance, what on earth were Fay Ripley and Martin Clunes doing in Fungus — apart from semaphoring in deadhead performances and picking up the cheque? There was nothing in the parts that could have remotely pricked their professional interest; except, of course, it was work, and you can’t blame actors for working. Clunes now appears every other week in some new off-the-peg role, which may make his agent happy, but is counterproductive. It isn’t about acting, it’s about personality. And as these comfortable performances lack authenticity or believability, sooner rather than later a producer is going to say: “Haven’t we had enough of that face?” Where is Robson Green now? Nick Berry, or Martin Kemp?
Not only does the use of the same actors over and over patronise and bore audiences, and homogenise productions, it keeps other actors off the screen. Television no longer nurtures talent, allowing it to grow through ingénue, to leading, then character parts as a specialist in the small screen. Outside the industry, casting is an unrecognised skill, but it is one of the most vital, and on television it has become remedial.
Now, think back, back, back to Top of the Form — sorry, but a few of you will have the tinnitus of that theme music in your head for the rest of the day. If you’re too young to remember Top of the Form, it was a friendly Friday-afternoon quiz between different schools that was robustly competitive in a good- natured sort of way. The questions were difficult enough to impress parents, and the contestants were speccy teacher’s pets, so that the rest of us could despise them for knowing the capital of Peru. I remembered Top of the Form while watching Hard Spell (BBC1, daily).
There are moments on television that show in stark relief the distance we’ve travelled in a generation. This is one of them. It’s an imported high-pressure American competition in which kids aged 11-14 are pitted against each other in regional heats, then the national finals, until there is a winner at the weekend. Gone is the classroom atmosphere of sitting behind a protective desk, with a teacher-like invigilator who wants you to do well. Now we have some professionally gleeful all-purpose presenter. Now it’s all spotlights and standing in isolation with a disembodied head pronouncing words (very badly, incidentally, and in a way that puts children with strong regional accents at a disadvantage). It’s more The Weakest Link, Best in Show and The X Factor than a fun quiz for kids. The children are obviously terrified: they swallow nervously, their eyes bulge, they stand with stiff little postures and when they lose, they look stricken and sob on their mothers’ shoulders.
No television ever made is worth an 11-year-old’s tears. I was really shocked by this show. How could anyone imagine that it was entertaining to watch small children being pressured to the point of breaking down with so little enjoyment? It was cruel, plain and simple. The evening news had just told us that umpteen kids are being excluded from schools every day. Last week, Tony Blair made tackling bullying a priority. Well, you get out of children what you put in. This programme publicly picked on, humiliated and bullied kids when we should all be respecting and protecting their status and their importance to our future.
Now, you may think I’m overreacting to a game show. Well, perhaps I have an interest. I’m excused spelling — I have a note from my mum. The truth is, it doesn’t matter, not a jot, not a tittle. Spelling only matters in Scrabble and to retired civil servants who write dull letters in green ink and teach their budgerigars not to split infinitives. I just pressed the spellcheck on my computer — 805 words misspelt out of 1,200 — and you know something, the bottom line is I get paid the same for the wrong ones as for the right ones.
