tv – Page 24 – Rob Mansfield: Content-ment

Homophobia? Good! Racism? Bad!

Interesting article from Mark Lawson on the self-censorship that some of the BBC writers went through recently, specifically Ashley Pharoah, co-creator of hit series Life On Mars.

They knew that making Philip Glenister’s character DCI Gene Hunt likeable was the key to a successful show. This meant that racist comments, which let’s face it in 1973 would have been the norm, were removed, but homophobic and sexist comments were kept in.

This is a strange situation. No-one would deny that racist comments on a primetime BBC TV drama series would be seen with a very dim view, but is homophobia any better? Or the blatant sexism aimed at DC Annie Cartwright?

There has been a wave of nostalgia for the 70s recently, fuelled by the likes of Life On Mars, despite the decade being pretty grim for the most part: three-day week; strikes galore; prejudice, so why shouldn’t a series like Life On Mars reflect the true horror of the decade.

The irony is, if they’d had a black character who was equally racist, they’d have probably got away with it. Is that double standards?

House to Holmes

Hugh Lawrie as House I love House, the detective hospital drama starring Hugh Lawrie, primarily for the Englishman’s performance.

Who would have thought that an Englishman could make a misanthropic US diagnostician a success? What it makes it even funnier is that a number of American actors were rumoured to have turned it down, convinced that such an unlikeable character could never work.

Ironically, though, even though Greg House is American, the basis of his character is rooted in one of the most quintessentially fictional English character, Sherlock Holmes, with links-a-go-go.

– For starters, there’s the name: think of how Holmes sounds – yup, homes… house, geddit?

– Then there’s his Vicodin addiction – which is effectively his 21st century equivalent of opium, on which Holmes was hooked.

– House’s best friend is Wilson, while Holmes is Watson – coincidence? Shurely not!

– Sherlock Holmes used to play the violin to relax, while House uses rock and electric guitars to help him chill out.

– The killer link is the fact that House lives at No. 221 and in the ground floor Flat B – ring any bells?

No more Celeb Big Brother

Well, perhaps it will reappear in 2009, but C4 has taken the sensible decision to ‘rest’ Celeb Big Brother after this year’s race row, so no show next January.

There can’t be anyone in the modern world who didn’t hear about the rumpus in which Bollywood ‘star’ Shilpa Shetty (who, to my mind was almost as culpable with her sneering, aloof attitude) was abused and slurred by, among others, Jade Goody.

However, even though, CBB has produced some of the most memorable TV over the past 5 years, including George “Robotics” Galloway’s cat impersonation, Vanessa Feltz’s meltdown and Les Dennis crying, I doubt people will be that upset. The boredom and inanities of the show far outweigh the good bits.

Personally, I’ll be far more happy if they decide to “rest” the regular Big Brother – of course, Channel 4 rely on its viewing figures to keep up their share of the audience in the ratings battle with the other terrestrial channels, so they couldn’t possibly countenance such a popular move – it’s a show that past its sell-by date about five years ago.

The fact that it seems to be longer than the football season tells you much about the place it occupies in British society, but while approximately 20m people in the UK are interested in football, no more than 4m have any glimmer of interest in Big Brother.

Sadly, there haven’t been any similar rows or scandals during this year’s Big Brother, which probably goes some way to explain why it’s off most people’s radar – but then Channel 4 almost inevitably engineered it thus – so we can expect to see it back again next May, with the usual clutch of no-marks, who seriously think it will improve their life to spend a couple of months incarcerated with a similar group of eejits. Haven’t they learned yet?