BBC4 redeemed.

My last blog lamented the debasement of so much 'cultural' television, with a particularly dreadful example from BBC4. So today I must pay tribute to a beautiful and charming programme with which BBC4 has redeemed itself. It was about Gilbert White, the 18th century naturalist and ecologist, and was presented by Michael Wood. Packed with information, but presented in a civilized and leisurely manner; ravishing to look at (it is a marvel that Selbourne seems to be completely unspoilt); with contributions by gardeners and scholars, all unfussy and unpretentious (and all of them so very English); the lovely character of White so well conveyed; reverential handling of beautiful books and manuscripts; Wood's own enthusiasm infectious and not meretricious and without inappropriate gesticulation; a sheer delight from beginning to end, without a single false note. Would there were more such sensitive producers!

Another cultural television programme ruined by gimmicks.

I really despair of the 'cultural' programmes we see on television these days. On 22 June BBC4 gave us 'The Battle for British Art', the story (presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon) of how, from Hogarth to Turner, British Art became innovative and achieved prestige comparable to continental art. This is an admirable and instructive subject; and the script was informative and original. And then they go and spoil it all with the gimmicks that afflict almost all cultural programmes on television: restless camera work, totally irrelevant images of modern street scenes, the irritating hand movements of the speaker who also hardly ever stood still, but, worst of all, a complete visual disrespect of the paintings under discussion. Sometimes the painting was filmed in situ in a gallery, though rarely did the camera dwell long enough on the image for us to savour it as we should; but very often we had Graham-Dixon in sharp focus looming in the foreground, while a slide projector cast a muddy and discoloured image onto some surface that was clearly not a decent screen. What a disgraceful decline from the calm presentation and beautiful camera work of Civilization by Kenneth Clark!

'The Sudanese government'

I have been watching last night's television documentary on the Darfur/Chad tragedy, with further evidence that 'the Sudanese government' is supporting the Janjaweed (whom it sometimes claims it cannot control) with airstrikes, heavy artillery etc. It always strikes me as strange that such reports always refer to the 'Sudanese government' and hardly ever name the Sudanese dictator, Omar Hasan Ahmed al-Bashir. It is as if one had never referred to the crimes of Saddam Hussein, but only to those of the then 'Iraqi government'. What, I wonder, has given al-Bashir this cloak of relatively anonymity in our media? For the genocidal misery he has inflicted upon his people for years, he should be every bit as much a candidate for the Hague tribunal as the likes of Slobodan Milosevic.

Olmert describes Palestinian Referendum as 'meaningless'.

Olmert has been reported as saying that the plan to be put to a Palestinian referendum cannot be a basis for negotiations with Israel and is meaningless. Whether it can be a basis for negotiations is one thing (though Olmert seems determined not to enter into any negotiations with the Palestinians unless they have surrendered all their objectives in advance of them). But to call the Referendum meaningless is just stupid, and another example of undermining Abbas in his struggle against Hamas. Olmert has learnt nothing from Sharon's mistake in this respect, which played at least some part in Hamas' electoral victory. Abba Eban used to say that the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This is, alas, now true of Israeli governments also.