Spoiled-for-choice viewers may be mistaken for thinking British television is in rude health right now, but hold that optimism – the old guard are here to slap you down. At the weekend, John Cleese informed the Cheltenham literature festival that TV comedy is flailing. “You don’t expect anything great – you turn on, you watch it for a few minutes and you think: ‘It’s fine, I’ve seen something like this before and it doesn’t excite me,’” he grumbled. Still, at least we’re good at documentaries. “These days it’s a three-parter if you’re lucky, or it’s a two-part series. I would like a stronger commitment and a belief in your subject,” Sir David Attenborough told this week’s Radio Times. Oh. But what about drama? We’re great at that. “I don’t think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the UK and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings,” said Charles Dance in a recent interview with this paper. In short: things aren’t as good as they were in my day.
It’s impossible to deny the experience of these three men – and contradicting Attenborough may well be illegal – but they’re wrong. TV has fragmented into a wide variety of formats and distribution methods and within this, innovation is thriving. When traditionalists cite the comedy “greats” they mean a certain era, from Monty Python to the later episodes of Only Fools and Horses. It’s easy to forget that these classic sitcoms were few and far between, nestled within a landscape of rubbish. The quality, imagination and scope of modern sitcoms – Peep Show, The Thick of It, The Office, Getting On, Human Remains, Pulling and Fresh Meat, to name just a handful – unravels Cleese’s idea that comedy is repeating itself. It’s absurd, and not nearly as amusing as a dead parrot.
Attenborough makes a case for the return of mammoth 20-part documentary series such as Civilisation or The Great War, as, he says, viewers actually have the time to learn something from them. It is almost too obvious to point out that length does not dictate quality or educational value. Louis Theroux is the master of the powerful one-off film. With The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis revolutionised the format, and he rarely makes a series that exceeds three parts. “Rig” shows such as 24 Hours in A&E and the Educating … strand show how documentaries have developed and moulded to their time. I am happy to take concise, targeted storytelling over the sprawling epics that once dominated the schedules. It speaks to the variety of life.
Dance’s argument that producers make dross based on large viewing figures only really applies to Downton Abbey. Broadchurch and Sherlock pull in the numbers and retain their quality. Happy Valley, The Fall and Line of Duty were outstanding and had a sizeable viewership who watched as these shows were on, week by week. British television has pioneered inventive drama: Luther, State of Play, This is England, Red Riding, Black Mirror, The Shadow Line and Utopia were unlike anything that had been seen before them, though they have all been imitated extensively since.
“We have to take risks in British television,” said Dance, recalling the glory days of Brideshead Revisited and Jewel in the Crown. But surely the risk is in trusting the present and looking to the future, rather than defaulting to the past.
