The news that Melvin Bragg is leaving The South Bank Show marks a watershed in British television — and not in a good way. The 83-year-old apparently had to give up the reins of the UK's most famous art show at some point; but while Sky Arts, the home of the program for the past 11 years, has not confirmed whether it will continue without it, such an outcome seems unlikely.
This is partly because Bragg's shrewd and lofty look is thoughtful but accessible profiles are hard to replace. But that's also because his departure comes at a time when feature programs, and serious television in general, are rapidly disappearing from our screens. This is a catastrophe — and, as always, the poorer sections of the population will suffer.
British television has for years stuck to the BBC founder Lord Reith's mantra of informing, educating and entertaining, focusing as much on the first two as on the third. As a result, television became a great democratizer, providing an opportunity to learn for those who could not afford the luxury of a good education or a university degree. Ways of Seeing, The Ascension of Man, In Search of the Trojan War, all of these programs offered a first-class education without giving much erudition.
Today, I think it's not surprising that as these shows dwindle, the self-taught working class is in danger of disappearing. I'm not talking about talented kids who benefit from special education initiatives and outreach programs (of which, fortunately, there are still many); I mean adults who never had the opportunity to graduate, but who had an intellectual curiosity that television could satisfy.
I'm sure at some point intellectualism was vaguely encouraged in this country. All around our cities, adult education centers were busy places: I remember standing outside the Workers' College in Camden Town many years ago and listening to two old men play an intellectual salvo around Lacanian psychoanalysis. It was instructive and didn't seem out of the ordinary. Today, I feel that such conversations are rare: we have all limited our horizons, and TV is to blame for a lot.
1974 episode from BBC's flagship science program Horizon
The strange thing is that the TV industry is run by the middle class, who seem intent on reducing everything to the lowest common denominator. In more suspicious moments, I would suggest that this was a way to keep the underclass in check: feed them brainless morons and our place in the world would be safe! But there are more obvious factors as well. Ratings are a major factor: serious programs were rarely liked by the public even before the advent of the fragmented era of multichannel and streaming, which only made things worse.
Another problem is that the elite are afraid of appearing elitist and therefore rush around trying to be anti-elitist. The result is often a feeling of indulgence. Evidence of this is everywhere on modern television. In addition to Bragg's departure from The South Bank Show, The Times reported concerns about the future of Horizon, the BBC's flagship science programme, which has been running since 1964. Since 2020, only a few episodes have been released, and none. currently under commissioning. In truth, the series that once managed to entice millions of Brits into particle physics or microbiology has recently turned into popular science, with episodes with titles like «How to sleep well with Michael Mosley», which is likely forced Lord Reith to surrender. his grave.
The problem is general. There is a drive to demystify, oversimplify, and overexplain, when it's usually best to trust the audience's intelligence and accept that sometimes things have to be complicated. It seems that this is no longer the case. The problem is not limited to science. History now seems like a particularly bad cousin to me: the exceptional Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland (BBC Two, this spring) was the only recent example of a rigorous, well-crafted documentary that I can think of. If you do a digital TV search, you'll see plenty of history documentaries, but many of them are imported, poorly filmed, and lacking narrative flair or compelling thesis.
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is a rare recent example of a well researched documentary. Photo: Peter Marlow
Arts television has long been a battleground in this country, in part because it has a direct impact on the issue of elitism. While there are some promising BBC commissions (such as the return of Afua Hirsch's African Renaissance), I don't have much hope for projects like Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark's new fictional travelogue about Italy, which seems to imply that someone in high-profile BBC circles is concerned about perceived luxury. Similarly, Sky Arts, the tonic for concertgoers and music lovers, could make a few more documentaries that at least border on the serious — not that Sky, as a commercial broadcaster, has any such commitment. All this lightness makes me feel like I'm living on a gigantic BBC Bitesize web page or in a megalomaniac movie Carry On.
Times are hard, yes. The BBC, in particular, will have to make significant cuts: we will obviously have 1,000 hours less new corporate programming this year, which means that science, art and history have a larger presence on radio, where programs are cheaper to produce. . So the solution for television may not be to increase the output of science, history, and art, but simply to take them seriously again. Perhaps not everyone needs a strict monologue on Bertolt Brecht, but such topics should be treated with respect. Ultimately, television is the most democratic art form, which means that access to intellectual and not just popular works should be given to everyone.
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