Television needs more big ideas
Von Trier’s famous film
is poorly served by this
creepy, dreary opera
T
his week, Dorothy Byrne,
the head of Channel 4
News and Current
Affairs, delivered a
stinging keynote speech
in The MacTaggart
Lecture at the Edinburgh International
Television Festival. She branded our
political leaders cowards for not
answering questions on TV like
Margaret Thatcher used to, took aim at
the older men who sexually abused
and tried to take advantage of her as a
young journalist on ITV’s World in
Action, and claimed that among her
predecessors at the MacTaggart dais
was one “who has not yet had the
comeuppance he deserves for his
assaults on women”.
She also had some searing points to
make about British television today.
“I don’t see big ideas on TV now,”
Byrne said. “Where are the
programmes that shake all our
assumptions about society?”
Broadcasters, she stressed, need to
“start making big controversial
programmes about the UK that put us
back at the heart of public debate as
we used to be”. She picked out
examples such as Seven Up!, which
began life as an episode of World in
Action in 1964 (and was still enthralling
viewers this year), and the same
strand’s investigation into the
Birmingham Six in the mid-Eighties,
which helped convince home
secretary Douglas Hurd to refer the
case back to the Court of Appeal more
than a decade after the men convicted
of the IRA pub bombings had been
refused leave to appeal in 1976.
“We are all desperate for young
audiences,” she declared, calling on
terrestrial broadcasters to make
programmes that engage the “millions
of young people [who] are now
politically aware and active”. They’re
watching Ted talks and listening to
podcasts, she said, but not being
offered “really clever and difficult
programmes” on television. Attracting
that audience, she suggested, could
turn the tide against the streaming
giants, such as Netflix. It does put
serious money into documentaries,
but Byrne highlighted its intense focus
on eye-catching topics such as drugs
and serial killers.
Her underlying analysis was spot
on. This is a generation more
switched-on politically than any since
the Seventies or Eighties, and possibly
more than both. And you don’t have to
venture too far into Twitter to realise
that these young idealists make up a
sizeable proportion of those who sat
through two months of Love Island
this summer. It’s also clear that the
field of serious documentary-making
on British is much denuded.
The BBC’s Panorama, of course, is
still standing. It began in 1953,
documented Britain from new towns to
mods and rockers, and, under the aegis
of Richard Dimbleby, regularly brought
politicians to account – at a time when
they were still willing to explain
themselves. It’s still making important
contributions to national discourse,
such as Undercover Hospital AbuseScandal and the two-part Crisis in Care,
which were broadcast earlier this year
but World in Action (1963-98), Man Alive
(BBC Two, 1965-81) and This Week (ITV,
1956-79 and 1986-92) are all long gone.
I grew up surrounded by these
shows – some of my earliest TV
memories are of frightening trails for
Panorama episodes that kept meawake at night with visions of
imminent apocalyptic catastrophe
(“The world wrung dry!”) or the
terrifying footage of an exorcism that
was part of the title sequence for, I
think, Man Alive. I was drawn towards
these troubling explorations of British
society, which were prime time and
unavoidable.
But can you really wind the clock
back? What is it that Channel 4’s own
Dispatches strand is not doing that
Byrne wants to see return to British
TV? Dispatches has made its mark
since 1987, with episodes such as the
2004 investigation debunking the
claim that the MMR vaccine is linkedGetting serious: Harold Wilson with Robin Day and Richard Dimbleby on Panorama in 1964; below left, Stacey Dooley InvestigatesUnimaginative: Scottish Opera’s production, with its circle of revolving pillarsUntil Aug 24. Tickets: 0131 473 2000;
eif.co.ukBBC; BBC/ZIG ZAG PRODUCTIONSI
lluminated by the presence of
Emily Watson, Lars von Trier’s
1996 film Breaking the Waves told
the story of neurasthenic Bess, living
in a remote puritanical Scottish
community and deeply infatuated
with her oil-rig worker husband Jan.
After he is crippled in an industrial
accident, he asks her to seek out other
sexual partners and report the details
to him. Terrified and riddled with
irrational guilt, she obeys, with
results that are both destructive and
redemptive.
This bizarre scenario has now been
adapted into an opera by the
American composer Missy Mazzoli
and librettist Royce Vavrek. The
result has enjoyed considerable
success in the US, but here it seems to
fall flat: what Von Trier made into a
psychologically compelling
exploration of the theme of female
self-sacrifice has curdled into
something merely prurient, maudlin
and creepily distasteful.
Perhaps the principal problem is
that Mazzoli’s music simply isn’t
powerful enough – the subject matter
calls for a Janáček to animate it. Her
approach is insipidly tonal, not harsh
on the ear but lacking in drive and
impetus. Rather than flowing lyrically
or developing dramatically, it seems
to jerk along, and what should beharshly and bleakly raw materialises
as soft-edged and sentimental.
The setting (fantasised) suggests
some rocky Isle of Skye, battered by
the elements, but what we hear is
more redolent of the rolling American
prairie. On the credit side, Mazzoli’s
vocal writing is shapely and words
come through easily.
There’s plenty of superficial
short-winded vivacity, and a few
striking effects, including the rather
obvious one of the kirk’s merciless
male elders chanting chorally in
robotic staccato. The last 20 minutes
build to a climax, but the temperature
plummets at the conclusion, as Jan
moans an interminably prolix
breast-beating lament over – spoiler
alert – Bess’s body.
Tom Morris’s production, designed
by Soutra Gilmour, circles around a
revolving unit of pillars: the staging
doesn’t show much imagination. As
well as some salty language
infrequently seen in operatic
surtitles, there are several
embarrassing sex scenes, bravely
enacted by Sydney Mancasola, an
excellent soprano who gives her all in
a performance of touching sincerity.
Duncan Rock is sympathetic as the
hapless hunk Jan, and Wallis Giunta,
Susan Bullock and Elgan Llyr Thomas
give honourable support in
ungrateful subsidiary roles. Stuart
Stratford conducts a chamber
orchestra featuring an electronic
synthesizer.
Scottish Opera can boast a strong
record for presenting new work over
the past decade, but this dreary piece
will not enhance it.Arts
Edinburgh International FestivalBreaking the Waves
Scottish Opera
King’s Theatre★★★★★
By Rupert ChristiansenSwift is in love, and she
has never sounded better
A
merica’s sweetheart shows
divided loyalties on her seventh
album, Lover, the most eagerly
anticipated record of the year –
released today. “They say home is
where the heart is / But God I love the
English!” she gaily announces on
London Boy. Always the most personal
of lyricists, Taylor Swift has conjured
up a cheery paean to her British beau,
actor Joe Alwyn. Over a swinging rock
’n’ roll beat, the US superstar sings the
praises of beer mats, grey skies and
cab rides through the likes of
Shoreditch and Highgate. “You can
find me in the pub, we are watching
rugby with his school friends,” she
declares with the glee of a tourist
indulging in local customs.
It’s a pleasing bit of pop fluff
worthy of early Lily Allen, on an
album well stocked with
bright, light, snappy tunes.
But Swift’s corresponding
disenchantment with the
state of her own nation
emerges dramatically on Miss
Americana & the Heartbreak
Prince, in which a teenage
romance between a
cheerleader and a rebel
serves as a critique of
American values, with the
high school as metaphor for
the body politic: “The whole
school is rolling fake dice /
You play stupid games, you
win stupid prizes.”
The 29-year-old recentlysuggested that she was prepared to get
political in her songwriting, but the
politics of Lover are exceedingly light
of touch. She makes a strong feminist
stand on The Man, a snappy electropop
anthem. Tartly noting gender bias in
media treatment, Swift almost sounds
angry: “I’m sick of running as fast as I
can / Wondering if I’d be quicker if I
were a man”. Musically, Lover is so
bright and breezy, even its most bitter
undertones slip down with the
ease of sugar-coated pills.
Lover may be Swift’s most
perfectly Swiftian album,
superbly balancing the
virtues of Americana
songcraft with slick, modern pop
production. Swift (credited as
co-producer) has reigned in the
digital excesses and punchy beats of
2017’s Reputation and the sound is
clean and lean, employing standard
chord progressions and mid-tempo
rock rhythms, subtly updated with
ear-snagging digital sparkles.
Cornelia Street, Cruel Summer,
The Arrow and the title track
hint at a drive-time rock ’n’ roll
and synth blend pitched
between mid-Eighties Princeand Bruce Springsteen, with a cheeky
dash of High School Musical. It is
reminiscent of Swift’s 2014 album,
1989 , but slicker and sleeker. Swift’s
voice has never sounded better, with a
clear double-tracked tone perfectly
supported by layers of her own
harmonies. There is a long, high,
fluctuating “ooooh” on Cruel Summer
that is just delicious.
The 18 songs (usually enough to
make any critic’s enthusiasm wane) fly
by in under an hour. Broad-brush
politics aside, Swift’s principal subject
remains pop’s oldest staple: love in all
its aspects, with enough
autobiographical details to keep fans
and gossip columnists busy
deciphering the who’s, what’s and
where’s. Paper Ring and I Think He
Knows exude a romantic zippiness that
would make them show-stoppers in a
Broadway musical.
There are interesting digressions.
The jazzily sensuous tones of False
God add intensity to Swift’s
ruminations of redemptive sex whilst
an ornate guitar figure provides
spidery support for well observed
torch song Death By a Thousand Cuts.
These are intriguing vignettes,
breaking up the party atmosphere but
brief enough not to bore. Instead of
trying to be all things to all audiences,
Lover plays to the strengths of a witty
songwriter in love, eager to tell anyone
who will listen exactly how she feels.PopTaylor Swift: Lover
(Big Machine)
★★★★★
By Neil McCormickSnappy tunes: the bright, breezy LoverGETTY IMAGESChris Harvey
laments the current
shortage of TV
shows that ask
difficult questions
to autism. It has also fostered talents
such as Dan Reed, who directed
Leaving Neverland, the co-production
between HBO and Channel 4 that,
earlier this year, skewered pop star
Michael Jackson.
It’s possible to make an
uncomfortable comparison with
television drama. For years, people
have lamented the loss of strands such
as The Wednesday Play, which gave us
Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home
in the Sixties, or Play for Today, which
produced Abigail’s Party, yet all
attempts to revive the idea of a one-off
drama slot have been ratings failures,
with audiences, now steeped in boxset
culture, seemingly unwilling to engage
in something so “gone tomorrow”.
Panorama still gets respectable
viewing figures but nothing like those
of its early years. Its strengths are not
easy to conjure either. A Panorama
journalist I spoke to stressed that
consistently asking the right questions
about big topics requires a pooling of
journalistic talent – it’s not simply
about the huge budgets that the
streaming networks command.
Big ideas in programme-making
have gradually been subsumed by the
drive to generate international sales,
and by personality-led shows. Roger
Cook may have been able to parlay his
confrontational style into The Cook
Report in the Eighties, but today we’re
more used to Ross Kemp and Stacey
Dooley, both good presenters but
neither hard-nosed journalists.
Byrne’s instincts are right, though:
audiences are much smarter than
television seems to think. The
opportunity is there, but it’s going to
take visionary film-makers to seize it,
and risk-takers at the top to make it
possible. One thing is certain: if it’s
going to attract new, younger
audiences, it must not look like the
past revisited.These programmes require
a pooling of journalistictalent – it’s not simply
about huge budgetsCulture newsletter
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