Author Archives: Natalie

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

The BBC Press Office says of Burn Up, its latest drama, made in conjunction with a Canadian company and featuring attractive Canadian locations*, that it is “a highly authored piece wholly of this unique moment in time.”

Don’t ask me.

Anyway, AA Gill of the Times says:

This gem of the scriptwriter’s craft was brought to us courtesy of Burn Up (Wednesday/Friday, BBC2), the hugely expensive and very Canadian and cavernously vacuous thriller about Kyoto and global warming that starred Adam from Spooks and Josh from The West Wing. Watching it was a bit like being manacled to the table at a Notting Hill dinner party, or being lectured by a vegan vitamin salesman.

The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers – rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well,they were all American. This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy.

And Kevin O’Sullivan of the Mirror says:

The end of the world is nigh. Americans are baddies . The oil business is terribly awful. Invest in windmills… before it’s TOO LATE.

Preaching the kind of dreary ecoorthodoxy that soppy actors just love, BBC2’s lukewarm Burn Up was stupefying.

I was a little worried that the BBC might forget to insert the evil Christians into the first episode as made de rigeur by the first episodes of Spooks and Bonekickers. But Mike McNally was able to reassure me:

Battling Holly for Tom’s soul is oil lobbyist Mack, played by The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford. Mack is essentially JR Ewing without the good points, and in case the viewer should be in any doubt as to the extent of his moral bankruptcy, in one of Burn Up’s many gratuitously America-bashing scenes Mack is shown watching a faith healer at work on cable TV, and exclaiming, with tears in his eyes, “Praise the Lord!” It’s not bad enough that he’s a shill for the oil industry — he’s a Bible-bashing shill for the oil industry.

*I want to be positive where I can.

Sam Leith in the Telegraph responds to the arguments in favour of the TV licence put forward in a recent column by the BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson. Sam Leith writes:

On the one hand, we are told that the BBC deserves its funding because it is hugely popular; on the other, we are told that its programming would wither on the vine were its popularity to be tested in the marketplace. On the one hand, we are told that it has a “unique link” with its adoring viewers; on the other, we are assured that so strong and affectionate is that link that it needs to be maintained by the full majesty of the criminal law.

Well said, but I did not agree with the following:

Above all, I’m thinking about news reporting. [As a thing that the state-funded broadcaster ought to be doing – NS] This is something that is very, very expensive to do well – and it is something the BBC, however bedevilled by accusations of bias, at present does do excellently. The balkanisation of the commercial media means fewer and fewer organisations are able to invest in original reporting or proper verification: cheap, quick and sexy increasingly trumps fair, honest and scrupulous. A properly independent BBC, funded by all of us, could be exempt from that trend.

I think that the balkanisation of the commercial media is not a fact of nature, but partly a result of “crowding out” by the BBC. The payoff that other organisations might get from putting their money into original reporting is much reduced if they must compete with a broadcaster that can put your money into original reporting.

UPDATE: Re-reading the Director-General’s article, I was struck by this passage describing what the world would be like without the BBC:

The Albert Hall in August would be in darkness – there would be no BBC Proms, broadcast across television and radio. The Young Musician of the Year would remain undiscovered. Pop fans would be denied the Radio 1 Big Weekend, and Jools Holland on BBC 2. Musicians in the BBC orchestras could be busking on the street.

In his commendable desire to avoid sensationalism the D-G has put his case far too modestly. What would actually happen should the BBC be abolished is that, deprived of their proper object, the eyeballs of every single person who had ever watched a BBC programme would instantly explode.

Please use this thread for comments about the BBC’s current programming and activities. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog – scroll down for new topic-specific posts. N.B. This is not an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or chit-chat. Thoughtful comments are encouraged. Comments may also be moderated. Any suggestions for stories that you might like covered would be appreciated! It’s your space, use it wisely.

I haven’t time now to listen to Che lives! but when even the (admittedly idiosyncratic) left-wingers at Harry’s Place say, “It’s as bad as it sounds” the portents do not look good.

Meanwhile here is one the links provided to that programme, namely BBC History’s presumably considered and careful view of the great icon of cool: Historic Figures: Che Guevara.

Che Guevara was an Argentinean-born, Cuban revolutionary leader who became a left-wing hero … The widespread poverty and oppression he witnessed, fused with his interest in Marxism, convinced him that the only solution to South and Central America’s problems was armed revolution … From 1959-1961, Guevara was president of the National Bank of Cuba, and then minister of industry. In this position, he travelled the world as an ambassador for Cuba. At home, he carried out plans for land redistribution and the nationalisation of industry.

Alas, the author seems to have neglected to mention another aspect of Comrade Guevara’s revolutionary service during this period, namely his stint in 1959 as “Supreme Prosecutor” and commander of La Cabana prison. During this time he enthusiastically fulfilled his proletarian responsibility by disposing of several hundred reactionary elements by means of the traditional bullet in the head. For the BBC to present a historical view of Guevara that blandly says, ‘From 1959-1961, Guevara was president of the National Bank of Cuba, and then minister of industry’ is actively dishonest.

A strong opponent of the United States, he guided the Castro regime towards alignment with the Soviet Union. The Cuban economy faltered as a result of American trade sanctions and unsuccessful reforms.

Sometimes all one can do is repeat a certain phrase incredulously. “Unsuccessful reforms.”

During this difficult time…

See my comment above. “Difficult time.”

…Guevara began to fall out with the other Cuban leaders …

Poor lamb, poor lamb.

“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary…These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!” – Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

BBC History’s pedagogy is so much more sensitive.

Adloyada talks about what the BBC didn’t talk about regarding what happened at Beit Lahiya. There was a vast explosion, killing a four month old baby amongst others. This was claimed by Hamas to be an Israeli strike. Since then Hamas has admitted that no, this was another Palestinian “work accident”.

Two of the BBC stories can be found here and here. The former story did get round to mentioning a “senior aide”. To see how much is not said, read Adloyada’s post.

Note also how the latter story sticks closely to stating the relevant facts, with no extraneous commentary about how Hamas must have been lying in its original statement. Sticking to facts is an admirable principle, if applied equally to all. The BBC doesn’t. For instance, the BBC is very keen to “add the context” and talk about war crimes when Israel blows up Lebanese bridges, but it’s “just the facts, ma’am” when Hamas launches attacks from among civilians, as in this case, although that is undoubtedly a war crime.

Following links here and there, I came across another comment on this from a blog new to me called “The Useful Idiot”. It’s about one of those odd “balancing” insertions that the BBC rarely fails to include in any report of Israelis being killed by Palestians though not vice versa. This time mention was made of a six year old Palestinian girl being killed by the Israelis. Presumably that refers to this incident. But what does this have to do with Syrian policy, the alleged subject of the article? Just enough information is given so that you know that the Israelis Kill People Too, and of course the BBC must add that it was a child. But no more. Not the time, or the place or the crucial fact that the Israelis didn’t just kill her because they fancied it, didn’t want to kill her at all, and only hit her because they were retaliating to attacks deliberately launched on them from areas where children live. (A further issue I don’t have the energy to discuss is that although I have no doubt that innocent civilians including children are killed in Israeli strikes I also have no doubt that many such reports are lies – unfortunately I don’t know which ones.)

Heavy stuff. A little light relief in order? What about some cutting edge humour by the BBC? Again, this one was found by Adloyada:

“I’m quite interested in the Middle East, I’m actually studying that Israeli Army martial arts. And I know sixteen ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.

“It’s a difficult situation to understand. I’ve got an analogy which explains the whole thing quite well:

“If you imagine that Palestine is a cake. Well, that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.”