Not being someone who watches BBC dramas very often, I really don't have much to say about them. Tim Montgomerie of the Times, on the other hand, seems watch quite a view of them and has plenty to say about them:
I understand guidelines on drama output will come under intense scrutiny next year when the BBC charter is due for renewal. Leading Tory ministers know that a nation’s long-term values are forged in drama, documentaries and comedy. We all remember stories more than we remember facts. It is, after all, why Jesus told parables.
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Let’s...have more of Peter Moffat’s Silk series with its anti-austerity, pro-euthanasia storylines, if BBC commissioners choose. Or Jimmy McGovern’s regular left-field assaults on social taboos. And certainly more of Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty — a drama as good as anything produced by HBO and rightly targeting police corruption. But could we just occasionally have something a bit more surprising too? Why are villains of BBC dramas nearly always the same? Thatcher. Business leaders. Bent coppers. Tory toffs. Catholic priests. American Republicans. The Israeli security services.
America’s cultural conservatives are some way ahead of their British equivalents in thinking about these issues. The American right may win as many political contests as the American left but they know they’ve lost the culture wars. And because they know politics is downstream from culture, that bodes ill for their future. The billionaire philanthropist Philip Anschutz has formed Walden Media to even things up. Over the past decade he has poured money into producing something different from the standard Hollywood fare. Walden’s most famous investments brought CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen.
Anschutz and Walden recognise that there’s a new establishment in place and want to encourage an arts scene that challenges this new establishment’s mores. The BBC, if true to its values, should want to do the same. Where is the play exposing the environmental groups who want to deny African children access to life-saving GM crops? Or how about a portrait of a world in which America has become isolationist, so terrorist powers run amok? The BBC could even try a comedy about the leader of a small European country who, despite being rejected by his own voters and being embroiled in a tax avoidance scandal, becomes president of the European Commission? Truth always provides some of the best inspirations for drama.
The problem, identified earlier in the same piece, is that:
According to Andrew Marr his employer’s bias reflects the large proportion of its employees who are younger, more metropolitan and more avant-garde than the average Briton. On their Facebook profiles BBC staff were 11 times more likely to identify themselves as liberal than conservative — at least until they were ordered to stop self-identifying. The corporation, Marr noted, “depends on the state’s approval at least for its funding mechanism and this creates an innate liberal bias . . . which is much more clearly expressed as a cultural bias than as a party political bias”.
All of which provides yet another reason why a large-scale blood transfusion is urgently needed at the BBC, most of it from very different blood types.
I believe in euthanasia... for Beeboids !
ReplyDeleteIt's behind the paywall, so I can't tell, but I bet Montgomerie misses out providing even more damning evidence than that ancient Marr quote. We know for a fact that Ben Stephenson, Head of Drama, said the BBC needs to infuse Left-wing thinking into drama programming, and we know for a fact from 28-Gate that it's a directive from on high to infuse Warmist propaganda into both comedy and drama.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC management themselves say they do this. Why isn't Montgomerie shouting that?
He did pretty much stick that, David. Just between us (and ignoring the paywall), here's the whole thing:
DeleteThe Queen’s Speech. The Budget. The party conference season. There are many staples of the political calendar and a row between the Conservatives and the BBC is certainly one of them. The latest erupted after the corporation’s assistant political editor appeared to suggest that Britain would be taken “back to the land of [The] Road to Wigan Pier” by Tory public spending cuts.
George Osborne was justifiably furious. Any suggestion that Britain might return to the social horrors documented by George Orwell was toxic for his party — and also nonsense. State spending is still scheduled to be nine times greater in 2020 than it was in the 1930s. A pensions, healthcare and welfare system beyond the dreams of the Depression era will remain largely intact.
According to Andrew Marr his employer’s bias reflects the large proportion of its employees who are younger, more metropolitan and more avant-garde than the average Briton. On their Facebook profiles BBC staff were 11 times more likely to identify themselves as liberal than conservative — at least until they were ordered to stop self-identifying. The corporation, Marr noted, “depends on the state’s approval at least for its funding mechanism and this creates an innate liberal bias . . . which is much more clearly expressed as a cultural bias than as a party political bias”.
And it’s this cultural rather than political bias that is the real problem. The Beeb tries hard to ensure its news output is fair — partly because the main parties watch the corporation like hawks. They swoop on breaches of the requirement for balance in the BBC’s current affairs output. In contrast there is explicit permission in drama and entertainment for “artists, writers and entertainers to have scope for individual expression”. While this might be unavoidable for individual productions there should be guidance requiring some diversity across all dramatic output.
I understand guidelines on drama output will come under intense scrutiny next year when the BBC charter is due for renewal. Leading Tory ministers know that a nation’s long-term values are forged in drama, documentaries and comedy. We all remember stories more than we remember facts. It is, after all, why Jesus told parables.
No one is recommending replacing a left-wing BBC with a right-wing BBC. There is no desire to introduce rules that will prevent David Hare from writing another one of his Turks & Caicos-style dramas with its attacks on the security services, America and multinationals. Their predictability bores me to tears and Sir David’s confession that he’d like “to put a pillow over David Cameron’s sleeping head” says a lot more about him than the prime minister (as does this left-wing, anti-establishment playwright’s decision to accept a knighthood). But few question Hare’s status as an accomplished screenwriter, although his best days are probably a long way behind him.
Let’s also have more of Peter Moffat’s Silk series with its anti-austerity, pro-euthanasia storylines, if BBC commissioners choose. Or Jimmy McGovern’s regular left-field assaults on social taboos. And certainly more of Jed Mercurio’sLine of Duty — a drama as good as anything produced by HBO and rightly targeting police corruption. But could we just occasionally have something a bit more surprising too? Why are villains of BBC dramas nearly always the same? Thatcher. Business leaders. Bent coppers. Tory toffs. Catholic priests. American Republicans. The Israeli security services.
DeleteAmerica’s cultural conservatives are some way ahead of their British equivalents in thinking about these issues. The American right may win as many political contests as the American left but they know they’ve lost the culture wars. And because they know politics is downstream from culture, that bodes ill for their future. The billionaire philanthropist Philip Anschutz has formed Walden Media to even things up. Over the past decade he has poured money into producing something different from the standard Hollywood fare. Walden’s most famous investments brought CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen.
Anschutz and Walden recognise that there’s a new establishment in place and want to encourage an arts scene that challenges this new establishment’s mores. The BBC, if true to its values, should want to do the same. Where is the play exposing the environmental groups who want to deny African children access to life-saving GM crops? Or how about a portrait of a world in which America has become isolationist, so terrorist powers run amok? The BBC could even try a comedy about the leader of a small European country who, despite being rejected by his own voters and being embroiled in a tax avoidance scandal, becomes president of the European Commission? Truth always provides some of the best inspirations for drama.
A recent episode of Doctor Who, entitled Kill the Moon, examined the moral consequences of murdering an unborn creature in order to benefit the rest of humanity. If I was an ethics teacher discussing abortion I would make my class watch it. It was the BBC at its best; philosophical without being preachy. If paying the licence fee is to remain compulsory it should be compulsory for BBC drama to represent all of its licence-fee paying public. You might even call it public service broadcasting.
Thanks for posting the rest of it, Craig. So Montgomerie is aware of the bias, but has no idea why it happens. Somebody should send him a few choice quotes and tweets to explain to him how it works.
DeleteWhat about the takeover of soaps by pressure groups. Many of the scripts now read like a series of advice leaflets or a personal and social education handbook from secondary school.
ReplyDeleteIt's death by worthiness.
Imagine if Shakespeare had had a character advising Othello to contact Jealous Anonymous or King Lear had been offered an Age Concern leaflet on dealing with inheritance in the family. :)
I've only ever seen two episodes of 'Judge John Deed', but they sum up my idea of BBC drama.
ReplyDeleteOne episode had Deed serving on a jury in a trial of an immigrant woman. There was a very nasty jury member with him who expressed lots of right-wing views as well as racist ones. The other episode was about a nasty pharmaceutical company. Some of the dialogue was ridiculously bad and the whole thing stank of well-acted, middle-brow agitprop.