Into every reign, a little life must fall. It’s the Queen’s 80th year, the 54th of her reign over us. What was most obvious in the birthday-card documentary
The Queen at 80 (Sunday, BBC1) was that she has enjoyed the meagrest drizzle of real life in an existence of duty. Even the poorest of her subjects is free to flick two fingers at the sort of men who belong to the Aston Martin Owners’ Club. But Elizabeth’s bizarrely self-imposed, self-denying definition of duty keeps her on her feet in the rain watching them for an hour and a half. Hers is a world set about with cliché and small talk, shared with the dullest people in existence, or interesting people rendered stupid by the nature of their meeting.
Royal documentaries are now a subgenre with its own conventions and traditions and an agreed tone of toadying insider gossip that invariably stresses the hard work and the value for money. They have both that courteous cringe and nerdy statistics that always remind me of Raymond Baxter doing airshows. The first royal documentary, made in 1969, was a huge international event. Now they seem to be just another fly-on-the-wall, slice-of-real-life TV fitted in between airlines and cruise ships.
For the 80th-birthday grovel, the role of Gold Microphone-in-Waiting — traditionally the hereditary job of members of the Dimbleby family — was given to Andrew Marr, who happily slipped into the hushed tones of reverence, with just that splash of supine familiarity that manages to make the monarch sound like a cross between a steam engine and a public park. That, coupled with the vox pops from politicians — who always have that particularly infant-school tone when talking about the Queen, as if she were some gallant little special-needs pupil — made me think, not for the first time, what a ridiculous and disingenuous excuse for a head of state the hereditary principle provides.
Royal television has made me a convinced republican, not because I yearn for a President Roy Hattersley or Bobby Charlton, but because, through no fault of its own, the royal family now represents everything that is tacky, obsolete, corrupt and servile in the country. It’s a magnet for lickspittle special pleaders, nostalgia snobs and men who have ties that say secret things to other men. I think that what we do to the Queen and her family is inhumane. What other 80-year-old woman would we force to do what Elizabeth Windsor does? We should stop being humiliated as a nation by the exploitation of this over-functioned family. We stopped chimpanzees having to perform tea parties in captivity years ago — why do we still expect it of these humans? Like Elsa, the Queen and her cubs should be set free. Why don’t we just have nobody at all? If the ambassador from Tuvalu or the Aston Martin Owners’ Club turns up, just tell them she’s out, running wild in the heather.
The Street (Thursday, BBC1) is a new drama series made by Granada for the BBC. If you wonder why ITV is making programmes for the BBC, or why the BBC is using your money to pay ITV to make its programmes, well, don’t ask me. The Street is a series of interlinked, stand-alone plays written by Jimmy McGovern, involving neighbours on a working-class terrace, played by the likes of Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall and Jane Horrocks. It could be seen as an allegory for the lives of working-class England today, or as the tragic version of Little Britain.
The first episode was a drama of hard-edged minimalist tragedy, a Greekly perfect example of nemesis following hubris. Neighbours have an illicit affair; he then runs over her daughter. Consumed by guilt and rage, she tells her husband and her lover’s wife, thereby destroying everyone. It was written with that tough, true ear for dialogue and anger that is McGovern’s talent. But classical tragedy doesn’t emotionally involve you. It is an exercise in destiny, a hard lesson. It can’t have the soft centre of sentiment that makes you weep or empathise, but television is a medium that exists on engagement and empathy. So while I watched with admiration, it wasn’t with what I could call pleasure. There was a detachment I’m used to in the theatre, but which feels odd in my living room. The format is too close to soap opera, with its profligacy of emotion, its relentless heart-tugging. To be confronted with a fatalistic story of destruction without solace or pity isn’t easy or fun; but then, I don’t suppose it was meant to be.
McGovern’s strength can also be his weakness. The sense of fierce loyalty he has to a media-mocked and demonised working class gives his work fire, purpose and a moral authority, but it also means he writes to rub Tristrams’ noses in their guilty, whingeing middle-classness, so there is more than a sniff of Dave Spart class war about his plots. It can turn the characters into ciphers and martyrs who’re always tripping over his chippiness. But this is a small cavil for what is a noble attempt to bring gravitas to popular drama.
Doctor Who (Saturday, BBC1) returned. The Doctor must be the longest-running fictional character on TV. He’s managed to remain a character by having no character at all, or having anyone’s. David Tennant, his new minder, is going to be a manic enthusiast. I know the signs: mad grins and shouting. Doctors tend to swing from enthusiasts to enigmatic obscurists. It’s either grinning or frowning. Billie Piper is back as Billie Piper. She and the Doctor kiss for the first time in God knows how many years of sexual tension.
Actually, it’s a bit of a cheat. It’s not really Billie Piper but Zoë Wanamaker inside Billie Piper who kisses the Doctor. There’s a nasty psychological pill for the pre-pubes watching, who have dark fantasies about snogging Billie: open your eyes to find it’s your mum-lookalike, Zoë. Despite the added sex, after all these millenniums, the show still survives only on the quality of its prosthetics and special effects.
Ghostboat (Sunday, ITV1) is the story of a lost white submarine that resurfaces after 38 years. Ping-ping! Underwater dramas have more rituals and clichés and traditions than a royal garden party. How somebody managed to traduce the genre into this malarkey defies depth charges. The plot is beyond explanation. The long first episode revolved around David Jason looking confused. He’d lost his memory, and we were left wondering not just what it was he couldn’t remember, but why he ever agreed to try. In fairness, none of the cast appeared to have any idea what they were doing on this boat, and they kept asking. But answer came there none. As best I can make out, the story is supposed to be part cold-war thriller, part Mary Celeste, part Moby-Dick, part Owl and the Pussycat. It was laughably waterlogged.
They do seem, though, to have got hold of a real wartime submarine, and I wonder if this whole production isn’t some ruse to utilise this bit of kit. Maybe they’re smuggling it to the Libyan navy. Perhaps it’s ferrying illegal immigrants to Faslane. Who knows the mysteries of the deep, as Jacques Cousteau used to say. The Germans made Das Boot, the best TV drama ever broadcast. We’ve made David Jason as Captain Birdseye with dementia.
