This week, Neil Calloway looks at the state of TV coming from the UK at the moment…
This week, Jane Lush, the new head of BAFTA, accused British TV companies of losing their nerve and subjecting viewers to a tsunami of nostalgia. Quite a brave move from someone whose job it is to promote British TV; it’s almost a Gerald Ratner moment, when the chairman of the eponymous jewellery stores described one of their products in less than glowing terms – he was, of course sacked and the company collapsed a few years later.
Lush has a point. More than a point. While you’ve all been binging on Stranger Things and House of Cards, the BBC have been remaking sitcoms from the 1970s such as Are You Being Served? and Porridge and ITV have been producing an update to Cold Feet. It’s hardly inspiring. Nobody (apart from my girlfriend) was begging to see a new episode of Goodnight Sweetheart, were they?
That’s not to say that US TV is superior to British TV across the board; David Attenborough’s documentaries are obviously better than Khloe and Kourtney Take Kabul, and US TV often feels like it is trying to drown viewers in a sea of interchangeable police procedurals (Person of Interest: New Orleans, or NCIS: Cyber, for example), but even normal network shows are better than their British counterparts; how many American actors are working in British TV, and how many British actors have to travel to the States for quality work?
In his book Which Lie Did I Tell, screenwriter William Goldman argues that the difference between Independent films and Studio fare is that indie movies unsettle and Hollywood movies reassure. A similar argument could be made about British and American TV. If you want to wallow in a warm bath of nostalgia, stick on a gentle Sunday night drama from ITV, if you prefer a surprisingly addictive cocktail to perk you up, you’d watch an American import. The difference is even apparent in the cookery shows of both countries; the UK offers the soothing Great British Bake Off, taking place in the grounds of a stately home, whereas the US has the frenetic Cupcake Wars.
It wasn’t always the case; British TV gave career starts to innovative, uncompromising directors such as Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke; now they’d be stuck toiling on soaps or they’d have escaped across the Atlantic to HBO. Tom Hooper was stuck directing EastEnders before he took on John Adams; not many directors make the opposite journey. Ian McShane was best known in Britain for Lovejoy, a gentle Sunday night drama that offended nobody; in the US he starred in Deadwood, the violent, profanity strewn Western. Similar opportunities just don’t exist in Britain. Idris Elba may star in the BBC’s Luther, but he had to go to the US to get his break in The Wire.
US TV is arguably the pre-eminent cultural form at the moment; exceeding film and novels in many regards, British TV, once the envy of the world, is struggling to keep up with the Scandinavians nowadays. In a post Brexit world, having your culture in millions of homes around the world offers a huge amount of soft power and goodwill, unless the BBC, ITV, Sky and other buck their ideas up, Britain will suffer.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published September 4, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
