Watchification

We’d be unhappy if pop culture didn’t regularly throw up Shakespearian figures like Phil Spector, flawed and brilliant (and in Spector’s case downright dangerous). Imagine if they were all like Cliff. This really lovely Arena takes the form of an extended interview conducted by director Vikram Jayanti (the BBC’s press release says that Jayanti’s “hallmark is empathic explorations of genius” and I don’t doubt it) with some additional forensic analysis of the songs themselves. Tracks from the producer’s long career are played in full as the action proceeds and mini-critical essays by journalist Mick Brown pop up on screen as we watch.

Here’s an interesting interview with Jayanti.

No question about it: the best programme classified ‘music’ on iPlayer at the moment: a lovely 1968 documentary about pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy. The young Ashkenazy’s evidently not your stereotypical classical soloist: not wild-eyed, tempestuous or mercurial and not an egomaniac, despite his international fame. He’s modest, curious, humane, passionate. The kind of person you’d like to meet and get to know. There are many spine-tingling moments in the programme: not least a rehearsal for Stravinsky’s arrangement for four hands of his Rite of Spring with Daniel Barenboim at the (brand new) Queen Elizabeth Hall. Inspiring.

This is really remarkable TV. Self-confident, imaginative, visually fascinating. An example of what you get when you apply the BBC’s stock of extraordinary talent and insight (and all those connections) to a really important story. Matt Frei, the BBC’s top man in the USA, presents a useful survey of the strangeness and drama of the presidential battle in the USA.

If Panorama was rubbish or just irrelevant nobody would care if it went out in primetime or not. The trouble is that the BBC’s current affairs flagship is excellent—so everybody cares about it. And for that reason it must stay in primetime and it must continue to attract the budget and the resource that it always did. Hooray for Panorama!

If there was a channel that showed only speeded-up movies filmed from the cab of a train I would watch it. Here are two films from thirty years apart (1953 and 1983), screened side-by-side, and both shot from the cab of a London-Brighton train. Mesmerising.

Here’s another programme that’s not about the credit crunch. Also a pretty good reminder that there are still plenty of people in the world who have better things to do than worry about the crash and its consequences. There’s something special about this BBC News Channel feature: something really haunting about the vivid street level footage of ordinary Iraqis, police officers and American troops (by camera operator Mark McCauley). The simplified images you get from the news media daily just don’t prepare you for the richness and complexity of life as lived in Dora (the Baghdad neighbourhood featured)—for the friendships that Iraqis and American soldiers are forming, for instance. Elegant and important news television.