You’d think the Conservative party would have the measure of television by now. It’s almost 80 years, after all, since John Logie Baird produced his first set, but the Tories still give every impression of referring to it as the gogglebox, and worrying that they’ll get square eyes if they watch too much.
They were quick to realise its potential 50 years ago. Television’s first party-election broadcast went out in 1951 and starred Anthony Eden. These days, however, it is Labour that pounces most ruthlessly on the political opportunities of television, leaving the Tories struggling pitifully. I noticed this during coverage of the party conferences last year. Labour had cheerleaders to ensure the crowd clapped on cue; when Tory speakers paused for applause, there was always a short gap before the audience woke up and realised what was required. It made the party look dozy.
And hands up all those at Conservative Central Office who thought it would be a good idea to let Jeremy Paxman accompany Michael Howard on a trip to Cornwall last year, shortly after the Boris Johnson debacle. In the unlikely event of a Labour spin doctor allowing Paxman the same access to Tony Blair, a party official would have thought carefully about how each frame of film was going to look. Local party members would have been out in force, briefed about what Paxman might ask them. In the event, Paxman had a free hand to ask Cornish voters what they thought of Howard. The results were unflattering.
Michael Howard — No More Mr Nasty (Saturday, BBC2) was less eventful, but not all that much more flattering. It was produced by Michael Cockerell, who has made a speciality of close-access documentaries that build up a revealing picture of a politician through small and apparently insignificant details. Most memorably, he showed Roy Jenkins as a rather obsessive personality who spent precisely 45 minutes each morning walking in a zigzag pattern across his tennis court. Not a minute more, not a minute less.
For me, it was the ping-pong question that did for Howard. The Tory leader plays table tennis, and during a visit to Howard’s home, Cockerell put the following, mischievous question: “Can you tell me about ping-pong?” Howard looked taken aback, as if Cockerell had uncovered a secret mistress, then set about answering the question as if he were setting out his policy on the money supply. It was not a serious question, and did not deserve a serious answer.
Howard and his wife, Sandra, then obligingly played ping-pong. Here is a tip for anybody who wishes to become prime minister. Never allow yourself to be filmed playing ping-pong. It is not a dignified occupation; it’s a game whose image has yet to escape from the church youth club. By all means ping and pong if you must. But not on the BBC.
Howard is apparently good company in private, but he struggles to show this on television. He smiles a lot, but his smile is defensive. In his eyes, you can see the fear of political error. Somebody should take him aside and tell him that there is nothing more contemptible than a public figure’s desperation to be loved.
Let’s hope that the Conservative press department is paying close attention to Blood on Our Hands — The English Civil War (Thursday, C4). The lurid propaganda of the 1640s was enough to make your hair curl. These early news sheets were brutally effective, though, and fuelled a vicious cycle of atrocities: once the puritan press had circulated and exaggerated the violence of the royalists, the puritan army felt obliged to reply in kind.
The mistake we often make about history is believing that life was very different in those days: in fact, the people of the 1640s were very like us. They ate, they drank, they worried about their children, they had the neighbours round, they moaned about their health. Blood on Our Hands managed to give a sense of this, which only exaggerated the horror. And what was the war like for ordinary people? More ghastly than you can imagine. This 130-minute taste of civil war was punctuated by the cries of children and the screams of women having their throats slit. It was like watching the Bosnian conflict in fancy dress.
The programme demonstrated above all how much our ancestors owed their lives to chance and fate. The first casualty of the war was a farmer who happened to meet a parliamentary patrol. “Are you for the king or parliament?” they asked him. “For the king and parliament,” he replied with a smile. So they shot him.
Big Dippers (Tuesday, ITV1) was altogether more cheery and featured James Nesbitt in his habitual role as a lovable Irish rogue with a conscience. It was a striking example of how the gentle kiss of the camera brings glamour and gloss to all it surveys. In the opening moments, Nesbitt and Pearce Quigley — two pickpockets — kicked plastic bottles around a seaside resort in winter. There are few places more grey and depressing, not to mention cold, than seaside resorts in winter. Big Dippers managed to make this scene look like the high point of a pop video.
This farce was harmless fun, but depended on the viewer believing in one slightly unlikely strand of the plot. Nesbitt and Quigley strike lucky one morning with the old case-switching trick: they open the stolen briefcase and find £2m inside. Barely have they removed their jaws from the floor than there is a knock at the door and a local moneylender turns up, flanked by two heavies. He has heard that the two men have struck lucky. Quick off the mark or what? How did they find out? Does the FT run a wire service specialising in the proceeds of pickpocketing? The chance for Nesbitt to deploy his much-rehearsed look of a man struggling with his conscience comes when he discovers a ransom note in the case: hand over £2m or the boy gets it. Being Nesbitt, he decides to give it back, hotly pursued by the local villains, who think this is a bad idea. To keep the plot moving, there is another fresh twist halfway through: the two men discover they’ve actually pinched the money from the kidnapper, not the victim.
Big Dippers was tightly written, amusing and strangely uplifting. Which is more than you can say for Dalziel and Pascoe (Sunday and Monday, BBC1). When these Yorkshire detectives first appeared, they were worthy successors to Morse and Lewis. The dramas were nicely paced, cleverly written, beautifully filmed and relied on the bond between gruff, traditional Dalziel and his clever young inspector.
This series has been split into two episodes and, on occasions, I found it almost unwatchable. The music — which appeared to be taken from a previously unreleased album by the 1970s superband Yes — was intrusive. Gruff Andy Dalziel has been given a fashionable hairdo, completely unsuited to his character, and, what’s more, he seems to have turned into Pascoe’s embarrassing dad. But, most bizarre of all in the new expanded format, the plot raced breathlessly along as if it was unsure whether it could fit everything in before coming to an abrupt, clumsily edited end.
If this is a deliberate new look, can we have the old one back, please?
