The English can whine about the Barnett formula all they want – but they don't know how lucky they are. Last night while English audiences being treated to the first episode of the much hyped and rather exciting-looking Collision, Scottish audiences were forcefed The Greatest Scot – part one of a week-long examination of championed Scottish inventors, warriors and celebrities (though oddly, Dougie Henshall, the Scottish star of Collision, did not made the shortlist).
Scottish viewers have become used to cash-strapped STV opting out of high-profile, high-quality drama in preference for a homespun piece of hokum – I've discussed the issue on this blog before – but this swap felt like a particularly cruel example of cultural exclusion. Scots are well aware of Collision – we've read numerous breathless previews and noted the number of times the show appeared as Pick of the Day in yesterday's newspapers. And of course we've seen the exhilarating, enticing trailers, those flashes of screeching wheels, white-shocked faces and mysterious empty vans that ran on ITV2. Many of us were looking forward to finding out what the hell was going on – and the presence of Anthony Horowitz at the writing desk just spiced up the taste of anticipation.
As it was, when 9pm rolled around last night, the rest of civilised Britain got a chance to find out, while STV viewers instead got Alex Norton from Taggart spouting some of the oldest cliches in cultural history about Robert Burns (the first rock'n'roll poet, apparently), Robert Louis Stevenson (a master storyteller, we were advised), and Arthur Conan Doyle ("Who else has written a character who has stayed in the public consciousness for over 100 years?" Um … ) Norton was even kind enough to tell us about a funny-looking man called John Reith "who you probably haven't heard of" but who was apparently quite a player in broadcasting back in the day. While Norton asked a Burns fanatic whether he thought Burns was a great Scot ("Yes" came the surprising reply), I couldn't help wondering what was happening on ITV – was Paul McGann in intensive care, did anyone know yet what was inside that van, was Dougie Henshall's furrowed brow a more absorbing visage than Alex Norton's? Was Collision gripping, complicated, exciting – everything The Greatest Scot, which has been heavily promoted up here as the jewel in STV's autumn crown, wasn't?
Worse, we now have to endure four more episodes of this hooey across the week. Even Horowitz himself has stepped in to have a go at STV, declaring himself "absolutely staggered" to find out that the broadcast of his vision was crudely cut off at the Carlisle border.
Scottish viewers have missed out on all of ITV's best drama this year, including Wuthering Heights, The Fixer, Blue Murder and Agatha Christie's Marple. Instead we've been treated to repeats, old films, ancient buy-ins from overseas companies such as RTE's Proof and ABC's Fitz, and STV-made bunk such as The Greatest Scot. The company is in dispute with ITV over network programming fees, and is allegedly skint, but its insistence that it is merely addressing the uniqueness of the Scottish identity when it bails out of quality ITV programming is beyond disingenuous. It's a big fat lie.
