Soccer lads seek perfect pitch

Why, I have been wondering, did I not watch the first series of The Choir (BBC Two)? Judging by the first episode of its second run on Friday night, it is clearly one of the most enthralling, informative and uplifting reality series yet made. The reason, I conclude, is much the same as the 1,200 pupils of Lancaster School in Leicester would give for not wanting to have anything to do with their school choir – even if there was one. There is something about playing the musical card, particularly in adolescence, that can seem prissy, goody-goody and irritating. That word “uplifting” is somewhere there in the mix. What is a teenage boy or a middle-aged television critic meant to do with uplift?

Lancaster School was always going to be slow to warm to the angelic-looking Gareth Malone. Two years ago the London Symphony Orchestra’s boyish Choir Director was parachuted into a mixed school in Middlesex. Lancaster, according to Ofsted, is an all-boys school almost half of whose pupils come from deprived areas. Its ethos is the three Ss: sports, sports, sports. Its soccer team is fêted in assemblies where there is no music at all, no hymn singing and nothing playing as the boys file in. Its choir was long since disbanded.

Worse, while Malone arrived in Middlesex waving a giant carrot in the form of a trip to the World Choir Games in China, here all he has to offer is a singsong at the Schools Prom at the Albert Hall.

Many of the Lancaster boys have a word for singing and that word is “gay”. Malone says he has heard it all before (although this is one of the few times to my knowledge that mainstream television has conceded that “gay” has become the catch-all pejorative for our schoolchildren).

The dissenters have their own problems. A 13-year-old called Michael volunteers, but he has experienced bullying and it looks as if he is seeking affirmation and status. Imran is more talented and can hold a turn, but he is a lead trouble-maker in music class and begins to skip his private singing lessons. “Why is he being such a little sod?” asks Malone, rehearsing the chorus of that unofficial school song sung in staff rooms through the ages.

Malone suffers the school orchestra’s halting performance of The Pink Panther Theme, listens to a terrible grunge band, and discerns in a playground MC’s rap a call to murder. A handfuls of boys reluctantly sing Lean on Me and Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat. But what really impressed the boys, as it impressed me, was the uncompromising song that he chose to sing unaccompanied in assembly on his first day at the school. It was She’s Like the Swallow by the perennially unfashionable Trad. Songs don’t get much gayer yet, as one urchin noticed: “There was no red on his face.” At this moment it dawned on him and me, that being a graceful singer does not make you a castrato.

Lost ended its third season with one of the great coups of television drama, even if it cheated like mad to bring it off. A flashback of a bearded alcoholic Jack at his hospital turned out to be a flash-forward to after he had got off the island. His final words to Kate, who had also made it home, were: “We have got to go back.”

This infuriating (Jack spoke of his dead father as if he were alive) yet compulsive series returned last night to Sky One. In the future, we discover, the “Oceanic Six” are famous, which must mean that at least six of the plane’s survivors get home. Among them is Hurley, who wisely incarcerates himself in a mental hospital. Charlie, who drowned last time, comes to visit him – but only as a ghost. In the world of Lost this makes relative sense.

Back in the “present” on the island, Locke killed the parachutist Naomi and headed a breakaway group from Jack’s camp. Locke says the guys who are coming to rescue them are not who they say they are. But who or what is in Lost? There were some real grace notes last night. Hurley hurling himself like a cannon-ball into the sea in celebration of his coming rescue was one of them. But the series is getting dark as hell. For a while back there I thought the Lost island was located in the Doldrums. I think the series is out of them.

Out of the box

The Hollywood writers’ strike hits Sky One, which relies on premium American imports, hard. Last night it hailed the return of Lostbut because of the dispute there are only seven more episodes to show. The better news for Sky is that Ross Kemp in Afghanistan on Monday nights is attracting more than a million viewers. Clearly Sky’s documentaries are breaking out of the Ibiza Uncovered mould. But what to make of the comment by Sky’s head of factual, Andrew O’Connell, that BBC Four’s Storyville is “the one strand we all wish we had”? Really? Torture in Abu Ghraib? Living with Aids in central China? Irish travellers? Yet look at the subjects announced for Storyville’s coming run on BBC Two: brain surgery (including a Black & Decker drilling into a patient’s head); Oxford’s Hooray Henrys; “a love affair between a toff and a bus conductor” . . . Maybe O’Connell meant it.

andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk

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