SINCE IT so clearly piggy-backs on the huge and deserved success of the American film-length documentary, Spellbound, it is hardly surprising that BBC One’s new series Hard Spell shares many of that earlier documentary’s attractions, even if an initial glimpse of the show suggests that Hard Spell has been moulded into a cross between Top of the Form and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Who wouldn’t melt at the sight of an 11-year-old punching the air after his victory in a competition for which he didn’t know there even were competitions, or of a young girl weeping after nerves had ambushed her into misspelling a familiar word? Chances are that by the time we reach Sunday’s final many of us will have been seduced by that cocktail of competition, diligence and emotional trauma as children melt into their parents’ arms after having either triumphed, or failed, on television.

Yet you can’t help wondering if, in two or three decades, being able to spell correctly (“correctly” being the most recent consensus on how to spell a particular word: it’s not as if it’s ordained by Nature, like gravity) will be regarded along much the same lines as being able to read Latin or Ancient Greek: a token of a certain kind of education, a stamp of classroom flair, but otherwise a mostly academic skill of seemingly limited use.

It’s only relatively recently that we’ve even had what amounts to a bible of correct spelling. Even then, English and American dictionaries often spell the same word differently (for instance, in English we spell the word “joke” J-O-K-E, whereas in America it’s spelt L-E-W-I-N-S-K-Y).

You wonder how long such a bible will survive in the age of the internet, let alone of mobile-phone texting, which has made us realise that our brains possess their own version of “predictive text” and have a startling ability to decipher and build a sentence with the flimsiest of clues (Example: “ManU lost, haha!” means “I see Manchester United sadly lost their match today”, while the reply “FU2” means “Yes, but at least Felixstowe United scored two”)? So will we look back on a series such as Hard Spell the way that we might today squint, disbelievingly, at a primetime series in which contestants were quizzed on Latin subjunctives? I mean, what’s the point of regimented spelling when we can make ourselves understood to each other in phone-texting-derived shorthand? And look at all the brilliant writers, scientists, inventors and businessmen who were dyslexic and who still flourished? Isn’t learning to spell correctly a bit of a desiccated (don’t bother; I’ve already checked) pastime? Laura Smith, an English lecturer at Cambridge and consultant to the Hard Spell series, says that correct spelling is “a shorthand way of saying ‘I am educated, take me seriously’.”

Jaz Ampaw-Farr, one of the presenters of Hard Spell Abbey (BBC One), a Hard Spell spin-off aimed at younger children being shown earlier in the day, says: “It’s all about empowerment.” Yes, you know what she means. You smart when you spot an error in your own spelling, even if it’s in a hastily-sent email. Still, it’s not exactly a world crisis, just mildly embarrassing, like returning from the shops to find that your flies had been open all the time.

Of course, it’s possible that we can decode the shorthand of telephone-text spelling only because we recognise the well-worn path from which it is straying; just as we might know that we are heading westwards as long as we can still glimpse the M4 motorway, even though we might not be on the motorway itself. But what if the M4 itself becomes derelict through lack of use? Will spelling, and mutual comprehension, descend into a confusing Tower of Babel because we no longer have even the most rudimentary landmarks from which to take our bearings? It might be the best reason for the continued teaching of spelling.

Auschwitz: The Forgotten Evidence (Channel 4) reminded you that sometimes, however well you spell the words, they still don’t seem to make any sense, in any language. Fred Knoller, a concentration camp survivor, recalls arriving at Auschwitz and being told by prisoners already there that they would never see their families again, that the stench in the air was the smell of their loved ones burning: “We didn’t believe what they were saying. Who ever heard of gassing people and burning them? Who ever would dream of it? A cultured people, the Germans, musicians, authors?” And good spellers, too.

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