Art and education are the two great alibis of entertainment in this country. Whenever some louche performer gets nicked in possession of a dodgy bit of burlesque, he just says: “It’s not what you think, your honour, it’s educational.” Or, alternatively: “Lay off, you philistine Establishment lickspittle — can’t you tell art when it’s gyrating its nipple tassels at you?” The art defence, it must be said, has been abused by cynical men. It’s worn thinner than a fat girl’s G-string. Certainly, on television, it’s difficult to explain things away in terms of art. What’s art got to do with the box? You don’t pay your licence fee to have it wasted on art. Education is the fig leaf of choice when telly needs to get a bit of how’s- yer-father into a discerning nation’s living room.
So, Anatomy for Beginners (Monday, C4) was swagged and swaddled in a modest merkin of education, like those how-to-have-sex videos. We got a very personable Harley Street-style doctor in a pristine trust-me coat, who said plummily reassuring things about radii and cerebellums. But he was only the beard. The real joy, what we’d come to see, was Gunther von Hagens, Fritz the Ripper, a spooky Kraut who has filleted and plasticised cadavers, turning them into exquisite, Germanically bad-taste trophies that pretend to be both art and education.
Here he was cutting up a fresh body (of an acquaintance), ostensibly to show us how it worked. But from the moment he began to flay the skin and arrange it over a sort of trouser-press affair, telling us in his Peter Sellers Hunnish accent that it had to be done neatly, standing exactly like an adulterer holding up his pants with his willy still in them, he had also stripped away any pretension of informing or educating. This was basically a straightforward freak show, set to stun and revolt in a comfortable sort of way. It belonged in the tent next door to the mermaid in a bottle and the dog-faced woman. That’s not a criticism: television is the natural progeny of the Victorian cabinet of curiosities. But it was hypocrisy. As with the sex videos, the pretence of public service made this much more bizarre and voyeuristic.
We were offered the addition of a naked live man, a lost, coy Chippendale who had muscles drawn on him by a lady body artist, like face paint at a children’s tea party. But nothing was as weird as the German professor, who is a cross between Frankenstein and Joseph Beuys in his fedora. He is a splendid specimen of a fictional character straight from an Edwardian adventure story, probably written by John Buchan.
We can only begin to guess at his motivation for fiddling about with corpses. It isn’t education, nor is it art, and I don’t believe it’s simply entertainment or exhibitionism. He is a double rum cove. The studio audience of “medical students and body donors” was included only for horrified reaction shots. The corpse wore a mask of plaster of Paris, making it even more bizarre. This was to “protect his identity” — as if he could care. I expected Richard Hannay to run on and pull it off to reveal the true king of Ruritania.
Why should Channel 4 have got its knickers in such a genre twist over this programme, and why are we so horrified and threatened by dead bodies? This should have been the most familiar and mundane programme. We all own one, have lived in it all our lives, and everyone we’ve ever known is either dead or dying. The revelation of a patella should by rights be greeted with yawns, not gasps. Yet our understanding of our inner lives is so completely divorced from its physical reality, there is nothing of the experience of life to be found underneath in the mechanics of our bodies.
Everything that is emotionally, intellectually and metaphysically vital is separate and apart from the meat and offal: we are, in the most profound sense, only skin deep. If you want to cut up dead bodies on telly, it’s the devil’s work; but if you want to cut up live ones, it’s the new Bafta-winning Lynda La Plante.
It was all education, education, education last week. So You Think You Can Teach? (Sunday, Five) took Tamara Beckwith, the It-boiled-good-egg with eyebrows, the reality-show understudy Janet Street-Porter and some bloke who used to be on EastEnders, and dumped them in a school to see if they could teach. How many times have they made this programme? Are there now inner-city children who have only been taught by resting actors, rejects from boybands and over-the-hill politicians?
Learning to be a teacher takes four years. Being a good one takes a lifetime. Being famous for something else has not the remotest relevance to being able to teach. The only help it can be is in getting a television show commissioned. This one taught us nothing about education or celebrity, and it taught the poor children involved even less than nothing. Just once, it would be nice to be offered a programme about education that asks teachers what it is like to teach, not someone who sells frocks or who was once postmaster general. And maybe we could hear from some children what it’s like to be taught when there is not half the cast of Emmerdale and last year’s Top of the Pops using the bogs for make-up. But who’s going to buy a programme on education that’s just got kids and teachers in it? Have we learnt nothing?
The Rotters’ Club (Wednesday, BBC2) was a rare and welcome sighting of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement, who have adapted Jonathan Coe’s novel. This is a historical drama, set in 1974, that follows some precocious schoolboys and their families — so we’re back at school again. The cast was replete, if not gouty, with stars: La Frenais and Clement can still pull. The story took its time to find a direction — the opening scenes were uncannily similar to Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. I was never sure which character was going to be our protagonist and which was merely local colour. Every plot strand was given equal weight, which confused involvement. But interest was maintained by winning performances, not least from the boys, and by the writing, which was solidly constructed, with wit and humour properly embedded in character and narrative. Altogether, this was a very polished and pleasing piece of television.
It was also infuriating to the point of haemorrhage. This historical reconstruction of the 1970s was myopically perfect, exhaustive and exhausting. It would have been wasted on anyone born since 1970. But this is my time, and every glimpsed TV commercial, newspaper headline, book, current-affairs reference and snatch of pop music was a hook into the lucky dip of memory. This detail didn’t add to the atmosphere, though; it constantly distracted, setting off little reveries. I do loathe nostalgia, and my susceptibility to being tugged down memory lane. There is no antidote for it. Nostalgia is a box of chocolates without a picture guide, but where every one tastes like violet creme. The first episode of The Rotters’ Club ended with the Birmingham pub bomb, and even that triggered a little twitch of terrorism nostalgia — ahhhh. I’m going to leave my body to historical adaptation.
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Is Channel 4 right to show the programmes or are there some things that should never be shown on television. How should death be handled in documentaries, news and entertainment shows? Was the furore over Jerry Springer - The Opera justified, or are people too sensitive? Let us know what you think.
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