Why nothing much
will be done
about Syria
In New York City,
I relax in the aesthetic
pleasure of the moment
Men will chase
anything in a skirt.
Even me
The Nobel-laureate
who supports
devo-max
John Forsyth
on an unusual
encounter in
South Africa
Get SR free in
your inbox three
times a week
Click here
Today’s banner
Mother and child
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
The night the royal
family sank slowly
beneath the waves
Kenneth Roy may have had to consume industrial quantities of sedative following his last article (8 June), but his stirring defence of the BBC is both welcome and timely. Yes, much of the coverage of the jubilee pageant was bum-clenchingly awful – the union jack sick-bag springs to mind – but it had to contend with the twin facts that (a) the weather was appalling and (b) watching boats in no particular pattern sailing down the Thames for four hours was intrinsically boring despite laughable comparisons with Canaletto.
These sections of the media most vitriolic in their criticism of the BBC can hardly be accused of impartiality. We can all remember James Murdoch’s particularly vicious attack in his MacTaggart lecture a few years ago, before the BskyB controversy. The commercially-driven, right-wing agenda of newspapers like the Express and the Mail has nothing to gain by pointing out the astonishing value that the licence fee represents, so they seek targets that they think will appeal to their most gullible readership.
Kenneth rightly reminds us of the glory days of the single play, but most recent original drama on all the BBC’s channels has been outstanding and the dumbing-down of Saturday night on BBC1 has been compensated in part by 9pm on BBC4. There is now a massive hole where ‘Wallander’, ‘The Killing’, ‘Borgen’, ‘Spiral’, ‘The Bridge’ and ‘Montalbano’ used to be. What other TV company in the world would invest two primetime hours on a Saturday night on foreign, subtitled drama?
Dipping into Saturday’s regatta – if you’ll forgive the pun – I was reminded of another landmark of BBC innovation. ‘That Was the Week that Was’, 50 years ago, brought us irreverent, anti-establishment, funny satire. I have a clear memory of David Frost, commentating in his best Dimblebore hushed tones, as another royal barge with the entire family on board, sank slowly beneath the waves. Not a hat was left undescribed. Only on the BBC…
Rose Galt
Barney MacFarlane
Having read the Lockerbie open letter in the Scottish Review, may I state my firm belief that there was no bomb on the plane that crashed down on Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.
Bernard B Elliott
Book a table in The Cafe. Email islay@scottishreview.net
