Eastenders and the NAO

Ever since it started I have always hated Eastenders.  Due to the repeats of “classic Eastenders” on some freeview channel down near the 60s it is now possible to fully appreciate just how awfully depressing, classist and depressing the original episodes were.  The actors are great, the storylines are engaging but it just makes any rational person want to jump off the nearest tall building.  Watch as Arthur Fowler suffers every indignity known to 80s man from redundancy to nervous breakdown to having an implausible affair.  Boo Dirty Den’s impregnations... 

During the 1980s it was decided for some reason that escape me that we couldn’t have any fantasy on television because it was too silly and expensive.  All science fiction and escapism was ruthlessly banished from the schedules and we were force fed by executives depressing soap operas in the same way that today they force feed us reality TV.  Unable for years to machinate kitchen sink drama as depressing as Coronation Street the BBC finally pumped all its money into Eastenders cancelling many popular programs (Dr Who) in order to produce a ratings grabbing drama in a do-it-or-die big financial gamble.  And we’ve had this tripe shoved at us ever since…

To cut a long story short for those too young to have endured the 80s the then 4 channels then became engaged in a war to fill the schedules with as much depressing drama as possible (because reality TV was yet to be invented).  But forward to 34 years later and it’s not all as spiffing down the square anymore.... 

For as HD television has seemingly made fantasy programs much much cheaper to film it’s also made conventional dramas such as Eastenders much more expensive.  While Doctor Who can now interact with ever more interesting aliens and planets who are entirely digital down Albert Square they’re still reliant on back lot sets.  I remember back in the 1980s a programme about the back lot set of Eastenders where we were informed (or lied to in the pretence that they hadn’t wasted a fortune) that the BBC already owned a few streets over at Elstree studios anyway and had adapted these cheaply into the original Eastenders set.

However, by 2015 these sets had started to be deemed as not good enough and in May’s Britain there’s no hiding the details of public expenditure anymore… so...  After spending several million changing all their cameras and equipment to be HD the BBC faced the embarrassment that the only stuff they actually filmed in HD was rubbish like the News.  Yes, it seems apparently the BBC cannot not film Eastenders in HD because the public might realise that the exterior sets were rubbish and wobbly (funny they never used to have these problems with Doctor Who).  Therefore a fortune has been spent re-building the existing set for HD.   Your TV may be HD ready but BBC drama was not.

In about 2014 ITV completely rebuilt the Coronation Street set ready for HD TV but times is harder down t’Beeb.  And so faced also with spiralling costs maintaining the old sets as plywood front after plywood front rotted the BBC decided to spend a fortune rebuilding the set for Eastenders once and for all – this time in real brick.  I don’t know why … surely some old buildings falling down almost exactly represents the real world housing shortage of the real London… but there we go.  And as the BBC is a public body subject to FOIs we also know exactly what they’ve spent on this (£86m) mainly because the National Audit Office has written a damning report.

The BBC’s reasoning for the rebuild largely revolves around arguments such as the fact that the plasterboard houses might look too plasterboardy in HD but can it really make that much difference?  Reading the report carefully other issues are more likely the reason.  For example … it’s fairly obvious to anyone who’s watched (or been forced to endure by living in shared accommodation) Eastenders over a long period of time that Walford is an entirely closed world.  In the real world the Queen Vic would have long ago become a Weatherspoons or been converted into yuppie flats but this would make storylines in which characters casually offer to sell it to each other as a result of criminal blackmail threats unworkable.  But let’s not worry about that – that’d be like worrying about which brewery it’s attached to.  In 2019 competing against large scale TV epics like Game of Thrones it’s becoming increasingly clear that viewers will no longer accept a set of 3 or 4 streets and a square that suddenly stops dead so that when characters walk off one side they must reappear on the other like in an Escher painting.  Of course no one ever really did but in the age of 4 channels there was no competition so we just had to suck it up.  So more fake streets are required.  Interestingly while all the problems of sci-fi have been reduced by digital effects and greenscreen they can’t use these techniques on Eastenders.  The depressing sets – like stunts in James Bond films – must for some reason all be done “for real”.

And so the BBC has decided in its wisdom that a bigger set is needed and made of real bricks not plasterboard fronts.  Of course with the average house in London now costing £600,000 for a semi-detached you could theoretically buy 143 new homes for the cost of the new Eastenders set but that wouldn’t solve the problem because the correct type of bricks to colour match the original plywood and plasterboard fronts of the old set have to be selected and these bricks then look conspicuously new and have to be aged to look as near to the originals as possible.  So a huge amount of money is being spent on making a new more realistic set look like the old unreal obviously fake one. 

The public wont accept all the sets of a soap opera suddenly changing anymore as happened when Neighbours was sold between networks in Australia in 1985.  “Seven” infamously destroyed all the sets to make life hard for their rival “Network Ten” who brought the franchise.  Of course viewers in Australia barely noticed this because there was a gap in broadcast but when the BBC ran the series back-to-back there was a remarkably sudden change in interiors that created a lot of complaints from viewers who had not previously realised that the program was fiction.  The BBC solved this problem by writing to viewers “sorry, it’s compete rubbish but we can’t change it so suck it up”.  A similar solution to the Eastenders debacle is unfortunately not possible however as it is an in house production…

To be fair the report makes clear that there will be long terms financial savings from the project so maybe it’s not all that silly.  However, with the sets going over budget the BBC may need to make cuts elsewhere and there’s some interesting reading about the costs of “human resources” on the programme which if I was a soap star would have me looking over my shoulder a lot in case my real life starts to resemble Arthur Fowler’s…

And sure enough a brief view of recent reviews shows a lot of complaints about "younger characters" (because the oldies cost too much so have been laid off / killed off?) and rubbish storylines as cheaper writers have been dragged in... Still who cares...  at least it will look a million dollars.  Or $105m.  As in the ultimate irony a drama about looking down on the working classes is creating a lot of work for people with working class jobs ... like building.

War Criminal Mr Blair pops down Parliament for a night out with old mates...

The courts having decided that they can’t do anything about Tony’s contempt for parliament because waging aggressive war while being the number one war crime isn’t a crime under UK law Tony has recently been climbing out from under the Chilcot stone to reward us all with his opinions again.  And so in amongst the Brexit lecturers at Speakers House on BBC Parliament I also noticed the one and only Tony Blair… and as I am in pain with tonsilitis I thought I might watch it.

Tony appearing in public is however still something of a rare thing as he’s continually in hiding from George Monbiot’s Arrest Blair campaign whereby the plebs are incited to perform a citizen’s arrest for war crimes for 25 per cent of the pot which at the moment stands at £10,574.89.  Nobody wanted £2643.72 on this night.  But then Speakers House isn’t really public.

Speaker Jon Bercow introduced the former Prime Minister with the most sycophantic build up imaginable.  It was clearly a massive coup for him to bag the former PM and he duly behaved like an open mic promoter who’d managed to book Stewart Lee – describing Tony Blair as having the greatest clarity of political thought in living memory. 

To be fair he did win 3 elections and the room of spads, politicos and MPs were clearly in desperate love still with Mr Blair.  There was even whistling as he ascended to the podium.  Other speakers sat in chairs but Mr Blair had a podium.  It was as if for one night only the Blairite wing of the Labour party was allowed to forget all about the Iraq War and the financial crash and it was time to party again like it was 1999.  Or maybe even 1997.  For bliss it was in that time to be New Labour.  But to be Tony Blair was very heaven. 

The old magic was still there.  The Cheshire Cat like grin and the sparkle in the eyes.  You could almost forget the elephant in the room.  Still, maybe Tony looks better these days in the same way that George W Bush looks better to those enduring Donald “How can you sack someone who’s doing a good job running the government that they keep shutting down?” Trump.  Tony told the mutual admiration society to roll around in their minds the idea of making a decision you could never revise.  Stating that no one would get married on such terms.  So I read the wedding vows and as a result I promise to be true to Brexit in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor the Referrendum decision all the days of my life from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until Article 50 do us part. Who gave us all these ideas of open borders anyway?

While the Iraq War was easily expunged from Blair’s monologue Mr Corbyn was harder to be in denial of and no one fainted with amazement as Mr Blair ripped into Mr Corbyn’s “we could do Brexit negotiations better” policy.  He said that Ms May’s plan of locking everyone into a timetable that could only deliver a “Tory Brexit” was not too late to stop… and made many many arguments along the lines of “only now do we understand what the vote means” to argue for a 2nd referendum.  And on and on and on and then just as if it was 1997 again…

… a standing ovation.  And like that... he's gone again.

Ken Clarke and the ghost of de Gaulle

The other day, out of morbid curiosity, I watched another of the BBC Parliament Brexit Lectures.  This time Ken Clarke blaming it all on de Gaulle as the populariser of the referendum as a means of bypassing parliaments…. 

Ken these days it seems is the father of the house – a quaint term for the kind of sitting MP who hasn’t got the message yet that their party wants them to get lost, die or go to the Lords.  Or who has got the message and doesn’t care.  Ken Clarke clearly belongs to the latter category.  After years of failed leadership bids – always the Chancellor never the Prime Minister - Mr Clarke has now retired to the back benches to spend his dotage making popularist pops at his own party for not being Europhile enough.  Exactly the same pops that have kept him out of the top job all his life.  Ah well, that’s principles for you.

Mr Clarke has indeed become something of a pin up for the remaining Remainers.  His speeches, like this lecture, are highly popular because like the late Tony Ben he has mastered the art of public performance to a high degree ... if not the art of implementing policy.

Direct stinging angry self-righteous attacks on the government or the Referendum or the Brexiteers are not Ken’s style.  Aware this might get the whip withdrawn (not that I suppose he cares that much about that with a majority of 10,000 and at an age of 78) he instead cloaks his attacks in multiple layers of self-depreciation – describing himself as garrulous, self-indulgent and pretending to be just a silly old fool to get his harsh criticisms under the wire ... even to the extent of having a glass of red wine permanently on his right hand side like a latter-day Rowley Birkin. 

In the words of the late Sir Humphrey Appleby “it is necessary to get behind someone in order to stab them in the back” and so Ken also plays the loyal party member card with aplomb.  He professes to entertain enormous empathy for the government for the difficult position it finds its self in of having to implement a policy it “doesn’t believe in” and uses phrases like “I do know the tools of my trade” to hint that if Prime Minister he too might try to silence debate … which is, of course, much nicer than outright just saying “Mrs May is trying to silence debate”.

Usually when he speaks in the House the Tory MPs behind him engage in pantomime theatrics to display their displeasure – such as eye rolling, sighing, looking bored or even falling asleep but without these distractions and with only a red board and a statue of Big Ben behind him Mr Clarke’s criticisms are much much starker for all his comedy theatrics. 

It’s like watching a child being beaten up by their grandfather as he rattles through a myriad of constitutional issues and technical problems in a … I’m not being critical but I don’t think anyone’s thought this out way …

Referendums bypass Parliament, all Trade deals involve the pooling of sovereignty, the soft border in Ireland will create a smuggling epidemic, you’d be better off choosing policy by lottery, I couldn’t do a deal with Obama you think you’ve got a hope with Trump?  The Chinese government never loses in its own courts so what chance you got?  What happens to intellectual property?  We’re now going to exclude ourselves from our own free trade deals we spent years negotiating inside the EU.  It’s a masterclass in verbally skewering your opponents yet somehow never quite winning the arguments…

No bank is an island...

 

No bank is an island entire of itself; every teller

is a fungible commodity, a part of the currency;

if the pound be washed away by the Euro, HSBC

is the less, as well as if a northern rock were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's money diminishes me,

because I am involved in the market.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the Brexit tolls; it tolls for the banker.

Pick Any Brexit with Jacob Rees-Mogg

In case you are sad enough not to have had enough of Brexit already I discovered turning on my television the other day that the BBC Parliament Channel have a series of Brexit lectures.  I was spellbound for an hour watching Jacob Ress-Mogg talking complete rubbish about the subject.  

One of the worst things about getting older is the complete lack of genuine social mobility in this country is rubbed in by seeing the offspring of pompous potentates rise to be pompous potentates.  Jacob Rees-Mogg has more than a passing resemblance to his father the late Lord William Rees-Mogg who’s great contribution to society was to wield the funding axe at the Arts Council and reduce the number of grants by fifty per cent.  I’m sure Jacob will also be elevated to the lords after he has made a similar contribution to our no-such-thing-as-society.

Between episodes of bizarre historical whimsy such as telling us about King John giving England to the Pope he offered three different alternative futures to viewers and listeners in the way that a conjurer might ask a punter to “pick any card”.   Not surprisingly by the end of the lecture we ended up with the Jack of Hard Brexits.  

There is a whole series of these lectures from Tony Blair to Ken Clarke to John Redwood I discover perusing the BBC website.  Each of them as thrilling as each other… In case you need an overview I have included a picture of a  Christmasy toy inexplicably tied to a lamppost on the Purley Way for no adequately explained reason.   

Happy New Calamity.