Television

Television over the Christmas period? Well, it was the usual rubbish. Lists of the top 100 Christmas repeats.… Gone are even the Only Fools and Horses type specials. Let alone the Morecambe and Wise classics. (Well, they aren’t gone, of course, because they are… repeated. But, I mean, new programmes of that quality are gone.) One bright spot, however, was the Christmas special of “Shameless”. I enjoyed the hilarious happenings that resulted when the Gallaghers’ estate was quarantined by the army after family friends Kev and Lip sold a stolen lorryload of poisoned meat around the area in the...

Dan Nichols reviews The Monarchy , Channel Four David Starkey’s history of kings and queens of the British Isles has been built up as a TV “event”. The story will unfold over the a four year period. Wow! It’s certainly an ambitious piece of programming — but will Monarchy tell us anything that we don’t already know about this assorted bunch of tyrants, cowards and neurotics? The first episode outlines how the Anglo-Saxons built the first nation state in Europe before and during their struggle with the Vikings. The first Saxon “kings” were in fact more like warrior chiefs who emerged as leaders...

Dan Nichols watches Fox News Depending on which polls you trust, the US presidential race is currently either tied or being won by Bush. This is amazing when one considers Bush’s appalling record. Part of the reason behind Bush’s lead is the way that America’s politics are covered by its media. Apart from some newspapers, the US media is in general fairly unquestioning. Even so, Bush has a partisan ace up his sleeve in the shape of Fox News. Fox News is Rupert Murdoch’s US news network and the most watched news network in the country. It is headed by Roger Ailes, a veteran political consultant...

Dan Nichols reviews 'Bad Lads Army', Thursday nights ITV1 'Bad Lads Army' is the follow-up to 'Lads Army', a 2002 programme which put a group of young men through 1950s-style National Service training. This time, the 'lads' all have a criminal past of one sort or another. The left's attitude to conscription has always been ambivalent. On the one hand we abhor the idea of young men and women being forced to go off and fight imperialist wars. On the other hand we feel a non-mercenary army would, perhaps, be less willing to be used for internal repression. Taking a longer view, come the...

Annie O'Keefe reviews 'Who you callin' a n.....?' Darcus Howe (Channel 4, Monday 9 August,2004) explored the growing hostilities in Britain between Pakistanis and West Indians and between Somalis and West Indians, between groups of 'black' people, towards all of whom white racists have an identical attitude of hostility. White racism against black people, noted Howe, now brings pariah status to its proponents, but racism against each other is on the increase among Britain's racial minorities. "Black is turning on black". Howe brought examples of what he had in mind to the screen. The naked...

Clive Bradley discusses the representation of gay men on TV Twenty years ago, gay men were figures of fun on television. There was John Inman on 'Are You Being Served?', simpering that he was 'free'. There was Larry Grayson puckering his lips as he complained about his friend Everard (the subversive, or anyway vulgar, implications of which were lost on me at the time). Gay men were camp, sexless, ridiculous. Now all that has changed! Rather than the promotion of homosexuality being outlawed as it was for a while by the Tory government's Clause 28, homosexuality's positive virtues are trumpeted...

Rosalind Robson reviews Death of an Idealist , 21 June, Channel Four An American girl of 8 or a little older delivers a speech to her school. An all-American girl. A middle class girl with an open freckled face. She is wearing a hand knit jumper with a Christmas motif (a present from an elderly relative?). She wants to help the world's children who are starving. This image is what we see at the beginning of Death of an Idealist - it is an old black and white home movie. Show us the girl at 8 and we can see the woman. The little girl grew up to be Rachel Corrie the woman. And that woman, when...

This programme started with the statistic that one person dies in war every two minutes. Such statistics seem to mean very little to people of the 21st century, at least those of us who do not live in war zones. We are used to seeing war at second hand, by way of the news pictures that flicker in our living rooms every day: this bombing, that mass exodus of refugees, things that happen in the "Third World". It all seems distant, unreal, and we have become numb to the reality. This programme aimed to break down our nonchalance, showing as it did one day, 22 March, in the life of 16 people, all...

Kat Pinder, aka 'Kitten" from Big Brother, spoke to Sacha Ismail. (Kat will be speaking at the Ideas for Freedom summer school in London on 3-4 July ). What made you decide to apply for Big Brother? It seems like an odd thing for a lefty to do... Partly I thought it would be funny - I was bored with life and wanted a laugh. And partly I thought it could provide a platform - not a brilliant one, but a way of getting socialist and feminist views across and making people think. The two aren't unconnected: the idea of causing some trouble on TV certainly appealed to me. Something like 20,000...