Maestro: Baton Camp

Peter Bazalgette, who runs one of the biggest producers of reality TV in Britain, said not long ago that whinging about reality TV is pointless: “it’s just one of the ways we do things now”. Here’s a good example: a really excellent slice of Reithian factual telly delivered as a gameshow using a reality format. It’s a competition: celebrities compete to conduct one of the BBC’s orchestras at a real concert later this Summer.

What’s really lovely about the show is the way the celebrities’ reactions to the process help us to understand what’s actually going on when the conductor waves that little stick. They’re all evidently in awe of the power and responsibility orchestral conductors own and also of the competence and passion of the musicians they guide. If you’ve ever sat behind a conductor—even a famous one with his name above the title—sort of vaguely wondering what he actually does, this series is really going to help.

Listening to the BBC Concert Orchestra bumping and grinding along hilariously under the baton of cheerful-but-hopeless Peter Snow is all you’ll need to convince you of the centrality of the conductor to the orchestral experience. Very good value. I’m going to watch the whole series. There’s a lot of extra stuff at the Maestro web site and here’s a story about it from the BBC press office.