Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
When it comes to television documentaries there seems to be a peculiarly British disease, rampant among directors particularly at the BBC. It is a pathological inability to leave well enough alone. In a recent BBC Panorama programme the subject was the spectacular cock-up that constitutes the current British railway system. After last year’s express-train derailment at Hatfield, the organisation responsible for the maintenance of the actual railway lines, RailTrack, was revealed as utterly incompetent. Trains in England, Scotland and Wales were brought to a virtual standstill as long overdue walking-pace inspection of the lines took place. Trains were restricted by severe speed limits and rail commuters took to the buses and their cars.
I was in England at the time, able to sit in a centrally heated Surrey house and watch RailTrack’s highly paid administrators as they steadily made the situation worse. As a bureaucratic fiasco, on even the high-treading British scale, it was a lulu.
A retrospective critical examination of this offered fascinating television. Not so in the eyes of whoever directed this edition of the programme: some appalling, pretentious dong who believed that clever visual effects were necessary in order to beef up the subject matter. And so, accompanying the facts and the interviews, was a non-stop barrage of speeded-up train sequences, tricky lighting, frenetic editing, spinning titles, unnecessary music and all the rest that is available from the wank chest of today’s video equipment. It was quite impossible to watch the programme.
What is it about the wonderful old BBC, apart from the fact that it’s being run these days by truly sensational schmucks like Greg Dyke? All the guts and enterprise have been kicked out of the front-line broadcasting staff by the teams of accountants who have taken over the corporation.
Even BBC news isn’t what it used to be. Sky and CNN are usually streets ahead and, if last Monday’s BBC World report on the current pharmaceuticals court case was anything to go by, more than a little out of touch with reality. Reporting on this, the South African correspondent for the BBC came out with a gem. Commenting on the high cost of drugs to combat HIV, he said that the South African poor were unable to have these drugs because their government couldn’t afford them.
Talk about keeping your head in the sand. The reason South Africa can’t afford these drugs has less to do with the greed of the international drug companies than it has to do with a South African government that prefers to spend R43-billion on arms, not to mention R300-million on a luxury airliner so that its president may ponce his way around the world in the sort of style he believes his importance deserves. That sort of cash would buy one hell of a lot of drugs, regardless of the drug cartels’ high prices.
What devout bigot at M-Net decides, over and above all other considerations, that a certain word is going to be cut out of all programmes? Last week’s South Park was a prime example of this individual’s meddling. South Park is broadcast after 10pm, it has all the warnings, including a spoken one from a continuity announcer. M-Net offers an alternative, censored soundtrack on all its services.
In last week’s airing on the uncensored channel the word “God” was blanked out. “Oh God” was excised, as was “My God” and several other permutations. A wide catalogue of other obscenities were allowed to remain plus a few “Jesus Christs”, used as pejoratives, and one notable “Jesus fucking Christ”.
With such latitudinal bias it seems that whoever is doing the cutting is an established Old Testament man. That M-Net believes the Almighty, after all these millennia creating and running the universe, is incapable of looking after His own interests on DStv, is quite touching. I am sure M-Net’s helping hand is being appreciated.
Top marks of the week to trusty old Douglas Gibson who, in last Sunday’s Newshour, efficiently shafted odiously smug AfricanNational Congress flunky Andries Nel, who, after a year of shilly-shallying, exonerated Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna of all culpability for squandering R30-million of taxpayers’ money, which could have bought even more HIV/Aids drugs.
Mr Nel was very vocal on the constitutional right to freedom of speech, so I am sure he will take my descriptions of him in the same generous spirit. What a tosspot.