Would you be more likely to choose for family viewing a TV programme that “contains some shocking and bloody scenes” or one that “includes some violence and scenes that younger children may find scary”?
To most people, the former sounds more horrifying – something by Tarantino, perhaps – while the latter might apply to the grimmer bits of Disney. But, in fact, the pre-broadcast warning of upcoming shock and blood applied to, of all things, Downton Abbey, while the milder caution prefaced a show that has reportedly triggered hundreds of complaints to both ITV and the television regulator Ofcom: Jekyll and Hyde, ITV’s new Sunday-night update of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror.
This is the latest illustration of the difficulty of categorising TV in the absence of a cinema-style certification system. Broadcasters have signed up to a “watershed”, in which the more adult scenes and language are screened only after 9pm – ideally, rather later – which is why some continuity announcements advise of shooting, shagging or swearing “from the outset”.
Producers, however, can’t make decisions entirely by the clock. Downton Abbey is a post-watershed drama, but one in which the content of most episodes is cosy enough to be shown at 11 in the morning, which introduces the additional regulatory factor of the reasonable expectations of an audience.
So, as in the case of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, in which Compo took a chainsaw to his chums, late-night transmission would be an imperfect defence, as viewers might have assumed they would get the usual Yorkshire whimsy. While the Downton announcement might seem extreme for a scene in which Hugh Bonneville’s character had a gastric haemorrhage at dinner, the precaution reflected the unlikeliness of the event.
Conversely, Jekyll and Hyde would cause little fuss as a post-watershed drama, but, screened at 6.30pm, it risks being seen as a 15 in a PG slot. To my eyes, the series looks like the sort of thing ITV would usually do at 9pm, but has pulled forward, either because it thinks it has got better stuff for 9pm or because it is chasing the fanbase for BBC1’s Doctor Who, which has long broadcast monsters around teatime.
But is the concept of a watershed meaningful and policeable in a time-delay TV environment in which, subject to an easily fooled age-check, anyone can watch anything at any time? While Ofcom points out that a majority of viewers still tune in at the times that the networks choose, technology means that it need never be 9pm unless you want it to be.
It’s no coincidence that both the bleeding earl and the Jekyll terrors featured in series screened by ITV. Newspapers prefer telly controversies to involve the BBC – because its editorial decisions can be attributed to lefty metropolitan contempt and abuse of the licence fee. However, the corporation, currently renegotiating its operating conditions with the government, is on best behaviour, as demonstrated by its recent adaptation of the most controversial English novel of the 20th century, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which omitted both the sex and the swearing. Now, that really was something to complain about.
