Sometimes you can be fooled the British public have elected suicidal tramps to run the country, change and cuts are the big issue and it seems like the Conservatives have already soiled the trousers of the British economy.
Inflation has rocketing well above 5% in the last quarter, the BBC is going to find it hard to manage over the next few years with the license fee being on hold. BBC Trust are currently dressing the wounds with the motto ‘Delivering quality first’ and one victim seems to be local programming.
‘Inside Out’ is a regional magazine show that the audience regularly gets mistaken for an extended version of The One Show, the show has been scaled back to only seven shows every now and then (I have no internet so I’m going to be very vague and incorrect). The cut backs have really shown in just this programme alone, the Yorkshire version ended with a segment about campsite cooking where all the budget was spent on Scallops (not the potato ones) and a camera lenses that empathised the bad weather.
I have no problem with TV done cheap and cheerfully but the show had one regrettable scripting error when the presenter signed off with ‘…the good news it’s only a few hours till dinner…’, how can the BBC broadcast a regional show and complete ignore that in Yorkshire (and almost everywhere else out of the M25) that dinner means the meal just after noon? My blood was boiling, I wanted heads rolling. How can the producers let something like that slip through?
As much as I love the BBC I feel the infrastructure is clogged up with too much bureaucracy. At the moment many independent production companies have the advantage when making shows, the phrase ‘too many cocks spoil the brothel‘ comes to mind. Being an indie allows the team to not compromised creativity to a mass mess of chipping thoughts (granted that most shows made for the BBC would have a few executive producers from the Big British Castle).
I have attempted to gain experience at pitching a show to many people including down at Television Centre for a bit of fun. In all of these meetings people have said to me ‘there’s no such thing as bad input’ this was normally after I raised an eyebrow during someone else’s thoughts on trying to improve the ‘idea’. Of course there’s such a thing as a bad idea, look at Owen Wilsons career or the decision for certain people to breed during a Halloween party on LSD.
Although we are not in a state as the states where not only the production team have input but the network executives and advertisers have their say, ‘amongst other transatlantic remakes ‘Life on Mars’ proved too much fiddling of a show from all levels took away the original qualities (what’s with it being a period piece without using music from that era?), I think ‘Episodes’ with Joey from friends in it tried making this point just as badly.
The late David Croft said in his autobiography “I don’t think any of my shows would get the go-ahead today because it’s so complicated. There are several levels of executives and they all want to put their penn’orth in.” I can imagine if Dads Army was made with the same level of bureaucracy today it wouldn’t get made, maybe if Channel four was around back then but some tool would have deemed it too soon and offensive towards domestic war heroes.
However my argument seems to have fallen flat when I think about that Jasper Carrott sitcom ‘All About Me’ where he had an Asian wife (don’t worry, I’m not offended by that) and a son with cerebral palsy who spoke with a Stephen Hawkins voice box machines thingy. For anyone who ever saw this it was probably one of the most offensive pieces of ill thought out programming ever and it was shown in a pre-watershed slot. The most shocking thing about this show (excluding cheap laughs at disability and Brummies) is that it ran for three series and was a BBC in-house production.
My message to cut costs at the BBC? Well I can't really say but I bet they spend a bucket load on consultants. Give me time and I will come back with a few theories. Why not watch this ace sketch from Big Train?
