As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune ? starting with entertainment programmes
The state of British TV: drama
Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television.
That's why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It's why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it's why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek "What IS this crap?", we can all feel proud. That's our crap, America. Ours.
Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn ? but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like ? and many, many people do ? but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he'd weep.
Creatively they're berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we'll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions, pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It's as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas.
Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter ? not to mention Guardian liveblogs ? has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again.
But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year's final, 19.4 million people were watching). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn't hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see.
For instance, we still don't have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he'll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you'll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music.
Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop ? but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don't Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated.
And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn't mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek "What IS this crap?" during that, it might be best to keep schtum.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/mar/28/state-british-tv-entertainment
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