Regular readers will know that I've got a new hobby-horse: Radio 4's From Fact to Fiction.
Previous posts have shown that the latest series has so far consisted of nothing but left-wing takes on the major news stories of the day - including Shami Chakrabarti's agitprop piece on the migrant crisis - hence my renaming of it as From Fact to Propaganda.
I feel duty-bound therefore to say that the latest episode, Sweethearts, combined the Google tax story with the sugar daddies story - i.e. two kinds of 'sweetheart deal'.
I saw that and (possibly like you on reading what I've just written) my eyebrows instinctively impersonated Roger Moore (or the Roger Moore of old Spitting Image fame), one of them very slowly raising heavenwards.
It sounded like the perfect recipe for yet another tediously clunky Radio 4 message-driven left-wing drama.
It sounded like the perfect recipe for yet another tediously clunky Radio 4 message-driven left-wing drama.
Oddly enough though, it wasn't.
Or didn't appear to be.
I honestly don't have a clue what message it was trying to send - if any. It got me thinking about the student sugar daddy phenomenon though.
(I wish I could say that phenomenon had never crossed my mental radar before, but Newsnight did a feature on it a few months back.
Come to think of it then, why is the sugar daddies story 'big news' at Radio 4 this week? Why was Newsnight so interested in it?)
I honestly don't have a clue what message it was trying to send - if any. It got me thinking about the student sugar daddy phenomenon though.
(I wish I could say that phenomenon had never crossed my mental radar before, but Newsnight did a feature on it a few months back.
Come to think of it then, why is the sugar daddies story 'big news' at Radio 4 this week? Why was Newsnight so interested in it?)
It came from the pen (or should we now say 'fingers'?) of actress and writer Katherine Jakeways (not to be confused with the captain of Star Trek's Voyager):
So that's 5 for the Left, 1 for who knows what, and 0 for the Right.
She has a nice way with the dialogue and is light on the ideology.
ReplyDeleteHowever,I think she is primarily a "cake and eat it" feminist of the Jenni Murray school...so there's quite a lot of the "aren't men useless?" tosh in her writing and posing as egalitarian as long as the upper middle class lifestyle is not affected in any way whatsoever and men continue to do the dirty jobs.
As I say it was light on ideology but it was nevertheless left of centre, making a link between Google failing to pay tax and young women selling their bodies to fund their higher education. The political punchline delivered in a mild exchange was about 3/4 of the way through.
Just because something is quite good doesn't mean it can't be lefty! lol A lot of Brecht's stuff was good.
So I would still give it a point for the Left. I haven't heard anything outside the left-liberal ruling ideology on Fact to Fiction yet. You know, someone making a link between say Corbyn's machinations and ex-KGB Putin's. Or someone making the link between a young Muslim attending Mosque more regularly and not being challenged on what is taught there before deciding to become a Jihadi...
I quite like the instant drama idea of Fact to Fiction. It's just depressing how it is handled.
The BBC is renaming all News 'Tell It Often Enough' as part of its mission to convince with words all that deeds contradict.
ReplyDeleteIt's uniquely crazy enough, it may just work.