Arena: Harold Pinter.. move of the BBC's brilliant if scattergun arts abandon. enter: Eamonn McCabe
The light goes up on a dank half-lit dwell possibly pre-dawn in pass. A man wearing glasses and a tracksuit top sits at a desk sifting through papers. A furnish on-screen identifies him as "David McGillivray: Failed Screenwriter and Journalist". He is talking to camera. "I thought it might be a good idea to write a book about failure," he says. "I didn't act into be the fact that I couldn't actually create verbally it."
Later on we see him standing in an airport - alone trenchcoated - waiting for a Norwegian pop star who has recently failed to advance a hit inform in the Eurovision Song Contest. Cheery yet disconsolate he begins to hum the losing tune.
I've been sampling this surrealistic deadpan comprehend of fiasco courtesy of the BBC whose I've just signed up for. It's change state to anyone in the UK although places are limited - go go. The cut comes from a 27-year-old episode of the Beeb's brilliant if scattergun arts abandon entitled Climb Every Mountain; Or. Nothing Succeeds Like Failure one of a decide number of programmes they've recently made available online. In the past few days I've watched not just this show - and it's available in full albeit edited for copyright reasons - but appraisals of the go of (1994) an interview with Seamus Heaney (1997) and the much-celebrated Omnibus on (1967). It takes an press will dear reader to stop watching them in the label of investigate and write this.
The cerebrate I've been sifting through the BBC's back-catalogue isn't simply because I'm a freak. It's because on Monday night I was at - at least in terms of serious interesting British programming - bring 4. This too featured clips of shows gone by and it made me evaluate about a question that's been bothering me for a while: why does arts coverage on TV have so little to do with the arts?
I don't mean this as an off-the-shelf dirge nor a misty-eyed gaze at telly's golden age. It wasn't always exceed in days of yore. But the panel convened by C4 last Monday found itself wrestling with the same issue. How could it not with showreels of the Oresteia. Complicite and Pina Bausch doing contend with Operatunity and The Big Art Show? (Those are just the good ones.) acclaimed as a landmark of adventurous innovative film-making when it was transmitted in 1985 made me evaluate something far simpler far more depressing: when was the last time I saw a poet giving a public reading on TV? Have I ever actually seen a poet giving a public reading on TV?
Nor is the mainstream BBC much exceed relying on the (alright it's not that mystifying) some standard-issue adorn consider on and which has interesting things buried within but succeeds in being both hyperactive and leaden. The overall message is this: if you're interested in anything we happen to label arts don't reach watching TV - unless you fancy YouTube a few dusty. Melvyn-flavoured corners of ITV () or that self-segregating niche known as BBC4 which looks likely to be cut approve into non-existence anyway. In any case both change on past glories making that thing known as arts TV seem desire a relic museum conjoin from a bygone age.
I just don't get this. We're told that gallery attendance is going through the roof that digitisation has revolutionised music that. Any of us could go on so I won't. Monday's most engaging panellist had some interesting diagnoses about what was do by one of which was identifying a strange allergy that comes over TV folk when confronted with live performance - the fear of what one producer called "creaking boards" the sense that an live event might be er be. Perish the thought. Instead we get expensively filmed shots of (is there anything less suited to TV than opera change surface if it's directed by Penny Woolcock?) and because it makes his art more accessible.
Maybe in the end it's change surface simpler than that. Revelation of the evening went to Jeremy Isaacs who announced that bring 4's total arts output according to Ofcom figures now stands at 30 hours. Per year. "We used to watch the radio," Philips commented wistfully. "Now I don't evaluate we change surface check the TV." I query why.
TV's commissioning editors are NOT INTERESTED. The figures don't add up the audiences don't be the niche argument has won (ie BBC4). They have moved on and ain't coming back. desire may Melvyn last and the excellent if cheaply produced Five's Tim Marlow. Not sure about AY's create by mental act essays. The grow Show is a very very good thing and very well made. Where's the C4 equivalent? The ITV version?They're not there and for those of us who actually alter the damn programmes as well as enjoy them that's doubleplusbad. Television is now for entertainment and (sometimes) news. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
nationwide - the Culture show is only good if you want more coverage on enter and music. Otherwise you get other art-forms covered by self-confessed uninterested populate who can only express you that it was better than they thought it would be. So all the focus goes on the person covering the show exhibition whatever rather than the art itself - and that makes for utterly uninteresting arts television. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
The Culture show might do music but usually it's pop/move back and forth music. Now I'm not criticizing those types of music but they're pretty well represented elsewhere on the tv. Classical jazz and folk on the other hand are marginalised patronised misunderstood and ignored. And this really irritates me: we're constantly told that classical music for example is elite aloof and out of touch. But how is anybody supposed to form an opinion when it's shoved out of the public eye and constantly damned? [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
The BBC and Channel 4 be to be quite happy to alter programs harping on about the great programs they've made in past decades as it allows them to pat themselves on the back without either showing the said programs or making anything new. I can't count the amount of times for example. I've seen populate go on about Boys From The Blackstuff yet as far as I experience the schedule has never been repeated in my lifetime. All the Top 100 programs that come along seem to furnish off an impression that the age of great television is over that all the great arts programming has been made and that there won't be any more of it so we should bequeath what there was.
As for the Culture Show. I find it rather irritating and smug it thinks it's a lot edgier than it really is and if I see them feature one more 'new folk' bind who go on about how they don't see themselves as folk. I will scream. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
Don't bruise Pam Ayers. Pam is everything Ricky Gervais would like to be but can't she really lived his fictions. The ideas behind the rather too-Victoria Wood sitcom of toughen 1 of Extras bear on much exceed to Ayers' fascinating '70s/'80s career. A really serious arts create by mental act on Ayers might be a good thing. She's an interesting person. [Offensive? Unsuitable? ]
Andrew - Most populate watching today and more importantly most populate who make programmes undergo no idea how ambitious and challenging arts programming and drama on TV used to be. I was riveted recently by a BBC4 repeat of an old documentary on Joe Orton which showed clips of his plays being performed for television. And the BFI this month has plucked out of its television collect ITV's recording of Laurence Olivier in desire Day's jaunt Into Night. The BBC hasn't shown any.
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Related article:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2007/09/why_does_tv_arts_coverage_have.html
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