Inside the Commons (BBC2) | iPlayer
Rory Bremner’s Coalition Report (BBC2) | iPlayer
10,000 BC (Channel 5)| 5Demand
Our Guy in India (Channel 4) | 4oD
Just as the BBC must have wondered if it was entirely wise to allow its premises to be spoofed, by itself, in W1A, so the powers – it was never specified quite to whom the weighty decision fell – must have tussled long and hard with whether to allow Michael Cockerell’s cameras unprecedented rolling access to SW1A 0AA, up there and personal inside the Palace of Westminster on Inside the Commons. I, for one, am terribly glad both decisions fell to the aye votes.
It is not so much a rotten as a rotting borough. Sir Robert Rogers, clerk of the house, who takes morning snuff, really doesn’t do dress-down Fridays and is the legal owner, while in office, of Big Ben, took us, with winces, round miles of leaking guttering, discoloured limestone and flaking gilt paint. With rather more pride he introduced the doormen – all rather skilled in putting a man on his back in two seconds – and clerks, and their rococo, sweet-as-nonsense arcanities. This was, a little bit, what this opener was about: how does the Commons drag itself kicking and screaming into the 19th century?
To an extent, Sir Robert and staff have managed a nice double-hander. The internet finally exists within Westminster (though the mobile phone service still permits significantly less identifiable speech than tin cans joined by string), and the more interminable and obscure answers to written local questions are now wholly digitised rather than further warping the creaking shelves. But still, Robert will insist on a laborious processional – and I can seldom see a pompadour’d wig without thinking of Hogarth, drawing cloven hooves beneath – with every new beribboned bill towards the House of Lords, even though it’s already just been sent in seconds to a shiny new computer. Fair enough: both worlds can exist contemporaneously, for as long as they can, and it’s actually quite comforting, like tomato soup with sugar. A modest proposal to move forward: abolish the House of Lords?
But this programme wasn’t as much about politics as people. Sarah Champion, shockingly too nice to be an MP – she’ll learn – hugged herself with delight at having finally succeeded in getting a grooming clause introduced to an act, after going through tortured consultations over obfuscating legalese with deeply clever young ladies in walnut dungeons. This being politics, and she being a Labour MP, her original amendment was refused: but it was right in there, months later, with the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and Sarah had the grace to be simply delighted at its inclusion. We also learned of the shock of entering the Commons as a spanking new MP: it’s like Theseus entering the labyrinth without the string, and only after years of osmosis and cunning can even half of the politicking and archaic protocols be grasped. Only the sharpest of rats learn the maze.
Nicholas Soames, who seemed a nice enough chap but is unfortunately memorable for a) being Churchill’s marginally less epoch-defining grandson, and b) an ex-girlfriend’s description of his lovemaking as “like having a wardrobe fall on you with the key sticking out”, spoke with real warmth of Gladys Dickson, the gospel-singing doyenne of the tearoom. Charlie Kennedy was great, homing in with real vituperation on the nonsense of the PMQ “friendly questions fed”, which just allows the backbencher to bathe in the glow of a pat on the head from the PM, who is simply allowed to preen with self-congratulation before he must face the attack-squonk Miliband.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was less good value than is usual, saying nothing actionably laughable, other than to opine it had been less than meet for the house, after Speaker Bercow had imparted the sad and slightly shocking news that Sir Robert was taking early retirement, to openly applaud his long service. “I simply said hear, hear. I suspect Sir Robert will have disapproved of the applause.” As often, he could hardly have been less right. Sir Robert had been profoundly moved by both the fact and length of the ovation.
As usual, Cockerell somehow managed, with the cameras and his commentary, to be sweetly sly (never snide) while keeping everyone onside: there’s a reason he’s made such respected political documentaries as Hotline to the President and News from Number 10, and this was no less marvellous. But where was the back-stabbing viciousness, the bitchy savagery? Where the stilettos? At times it was as if they were one big, if dysfunctional, family.
The truth is that, in a sense, they are: MPs, by and large, respect one another. It’s up to the bystander fourth estate to prise open the flaws and splits, and the satirists to insert thorny raspberries. Rory Bremner did his best, and that’s always almost by definition a hit-and-miss affair on TV. You can get sharper satire from Steve Punt on radio’s The Now Show, and he manages it weekly. But there were some grand moments, not least his Cameron (whose voice he’s now pretty much mastered; less so Miliband), here attempting to find a Blairite third way. “People are fed up with the old politics, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But both can happen.”
New reality survival show 10,000 BC was refreshing in its relative lack of diva-hood. It was essentially The Island With Bear Grylls, but with grownups. Within two days the 18 remaining stone-age wannabes, who included a surprising number of keen amateur hunters, had managed to wholly gut a deer for its meat and dried sinews: even the women were up to their furry necks in gore and rotting flesh. But these are, in every sense, very early days, and already the tensions show, not least in the weak-willed JP’s decision to take an aptly mammoth poop right behind the tipi. And there are two months to go. There will be more blood. Surprisingly addictive, for Channel 5.
Our Guy in India – odd title, nice programme – unearthed a surprisingly fine new presenter in the refreshing guise of Guy Martin, a lovely mutton-chopped Lincolnshire coach builder and TT enthusiast. Just going round India on a bike, but 10 times more charming than if Charley Boorman had done so. Ever wide-eyed and friendly, only he could have delivered, straight-faced, the line “it’s a country of extreme contrasts”, and meant it with every honest bone in his bod. I’m deeply keen to watch more.
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