I’m not an enthusiastic television watcher but I felt I had a professional duty to tune into both Scandal on e.tv and Hard Copy on SABC 3. When two rival television networks independently decide that newsrooms are places of high drama then maybe they’re right. There were mutterings that the sainted Anton Harber claimed that e.tv had stolen his idea when he took the idea for a script to them but, if that’s really the case, then it was a lousy script idea anyway and he is probably better off getting credit for Hard Copy, although only just.
What makes Scandal so laughable are the clothes. Maybe they should rename the series Pimp my Paper because I have never seen any of my colleagues at the Sunday Times wear anything even vaguely resembling the clothing worn by the journos in Scandal. The problem with a TV series is that life often imitates art and perhaps it’s only a matter of time before we will be treated to the sight of the Sunday Times editor resplendent in a white three-piece suit with two tone shoes. However, as Mondli has frequently pointed out, white three-piece suits are ideal garb for an editor unless you happen to enjoy pasta lunches. There’s nothing worse than flecks of Bolognese sauce down the front of a white jacket.
Hard Copy had only aired once at the time of writing but it too doesn’t look that promising, although the gritty realism of the outdoor smoking area and lots of actors self consciously saying the word “fuck” on SABC puts it slightly ahead of Pimp my Paper. I was fascinated to read that my ex colleague Justice Malala (for a short while the highest paid editor of a nonexistent newspaper in the history of newsprint) is an adviser to the series. Is this the same Justice Malala who told us that ThisDay would be back on the streets within a week when the surly printers refused to produce the newspaper for free? I wonder what sort of advice Justice is giving the programme’s makers? Assuming that the fictional newspaper in Hard Copy isn’t about to go belly up one can’t help wondering whether a working journalist might not have been a better bet. Maybe they’re too busy producing actual newspapers.
When the BBC first started producing television series about policemen the public were convinced that what went on in the series was exactly the same as what went on in their local police station. The hugely popular Dixon of Dock Green featuring a well past retirement date Jack Warner as the friendly copper on the beat gave me a warm feeling when I was growing up in England. I knew coppers could be trusted and that all that talk of Masonic links was nonsense. Then along came series like Z Cars and The Sweeney, which portrayed coppers as rather uncouth individuals who drank, swore and enjoyed knocking suspects around in the interrogation room. Now it’s impossible to make a television series about police work without a liberal sprinkling of dysfunctional misfits. Even Inspector Morse drank too much and liked Wagner.
The problem with both Scandal and Hard Copy is that they are likely to give the public a completely false impression of newspapers. The reality of the modern newsroom is that it is an eerily quiet place. Rows of sub-editors sit at their museum piece work stations, heads bowed over their keyboards trying to make sense of some appalling copy filed by a barely literate trainee journalist. Occasionally there is the excitement of a breaking story but for the most part newspaper editors spend their time wondering whether the boys upstairs will ever stop cutting the budget.