Watchification

The Explore series has been a bit random, sometimes feeling a bit too much like the original Rough Guide TV series from the 80s. But I’ve found the programmes about Manila fascinating: I spent a few days in one part of Metro Manila a few years ago, and the amazing contrasts between the tiny rich percentage and the slums and poverty stick in my mind, along with the warmth and friendliness of the Pinoy people.

This programme explores one of the major issues in Filipino life: the strength of the Catholic church, versus the need for sex education and control the exploding population. However, just the portrayal of daily life so different from that in the UK makes this worth watching.

I’ve complained before about the ever-increasing repeats on the BBC – normally with ruses similar to this spin-off programme. However, taking a story from the main programme on the Philippines and exploring it to the depth needed represents a clever use of multi-channel and digital TV delivery.

“All a format really is, is an emotional journey. It has tears, it has laughter, it has everything, and a great resolution. That can be applied to a game show, a talent show, a drama.”

The Money Programme has been running a special series of programmes about the media, including this episode looking at the business of TV, something that the UK excels at. Specifically, we’re good at creating and selling formats – a complete programme recipe that can hopefully be translated to other countries. There’s a programme bible, which includes everything from specific editing, sound and lighting directions through to, tellingly, how to pick the “real people” to appear in the show. The Millionaire Bible includes that the top prize money must be ‘life changing’: a million pounds in the UK, but just 50,000€ in Kosovo and Albania – which still represents twenty times the average salary there.

My favourite interpretation of a format was Affari Tuoi, the Italian version of Deal or No Deal. The show seems to last for hours, there are gag prizes as well as money, but the presenter, Flavio Insinna (now replaced by Max Giusti) was genuinely charming, and everyone on the show seemed to be having a great time, compared to the tension-ratcheting we get in the UK, and the smarmy, slightly evil Noel Edmonds.

Meanwhile, ITV have trotted out its new Saturday night gameshow, The Colour of Money, all formatted up and ready to be sold, probably including the gurning Chris Tarrant. It’s the complete opposite of Millionaire – it’s a random game, but with personalities, a backstory (husband going in the army), rationalisations about colour decisions (the game revolves around 20 ‘cash machines’, each named after a colour), reaction interviews with seemingly everyone in the studio, heavily edited ad bumpers showing crying, fear etc. Blimey, there’s even fireworks if they hit their arbitrary money target, in this first case £64,000 – not completely life changing. It all feels a bit pointless, with contestants and their families wheeled on and off so quickly there’s no empathy, and therefore, no show.

“We shape our technologies, then they shape us.”

After enjoying the repeats of Michael Smith’s Citizen Smith series, he’s been commissioned on another journey round the UK, this time focussing on cars, motoring and driving.

Previous BBC4 seasons on buses, trains, public transport have provided much nostalgia for the typical BBC4 viewer, even sojourns into motorways have lit up the eyes of the Guardianista with bright-eyed 50s infrastructure optimism, but this new thematic strand is about ‘the joy of motoring’. I can’t drive (like Michael Smith), and the only passing interest in cars is Top Gear. Smith reroutes the discussion to more familiar territory:- the growth of cities, the tension between freedom and conformism that cars bring, and the non-places of service stations.

It’s hard to determine quite what this programme is: not quite the tone poems of Keiller, nor the playful but rigorous intellectualism of Meades, maybe radio with pictures. They seem a bit half-formed, and that’s a good thing. Issues and feelings around things like cars are complex, and are dilemmas, with no clear answer. Smith has a trove of poetic one-liners, and his entertaining chats are with people that wouldn’t normally be on TV these days.

Whilst it hits all the cliches you’d expect – Paxman down a sewer, telling Bazalgette’s story – there’s a heady mix of architecture, art, literature and social realism presented to explain who the Victorians really were. As it’s in HD, too, there’s lots of sweeping shots and helicopters, a la Britain From Above.

Imagine The Apprentice with both A-Levels and consequences.

Lex van Dam is clearly an interesting chap. He’s either very confident in his ability to train normal people how to make money in an amateur hedge fund  that he’ll risk his money to proove a point, or he’s one of those worryingly rich people for whom losing a million (even if it’s only a million dollars) doesn’t really matter. Maybe he’s mad. Either way, it makes for surprisingly good television.

It’s better than regular Reality TV fare too. It’s easy to care for the characters (I particularly find myself rooting for the cage fighting promote, Emile) and the direction always seems compassionate, never mocking or exploitative.

I’ve embedded the second of the three episodes, so if you’d prefer to start from the beginning, and/or really want to know what happened next, here are links to episodes one, two and three.