Auntie: The Inside Story Of The BBC (BBC 1, Tuesday)
The Race For The Park (RTE 1, Tuesday)
World Cup Football (Network 2, Wednesday)
Gold (ITV, Monday)
On Side (BBC 1, Monday)
`I feel ashamed now when I think back to the event," said former BBC reporter, Frank Gillard. Recalling his wartime TV report from Dieppe, in which he mentioned only the attacks from British fighter pilots (ignoring the devastating losses suffered by British ground troops), Gillard continued: "The reporting of that event is memorable with shame and disgrace."
Following last week's Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture, in which Fergal "The Truth" Keane attempted the beatification of BBC reporting, Gillard's frankness was refreshing. Forget truth - disinformation from the BBC was a crucial and morale-boosting part of the Allied effort during the second World War. Auntie: The Inside Story Of The BBC screened The House That Reith Built, the first episode in a fourparter to mark the Beeb's 75th anniversary.
Made by the independent company, 3BM, this was, in spite of occasional criticisms, such as Gillard's, mostly another pat on the back for the BBC. Whether or not "Auntie" (a smug, cloying, nanny-to-the-nation term) believed that 3BM could make the series better and/or more cheaply than herself is a moot point. Perhaps commissioning an indie company was meant to decommission any charges that the series would be just another act of public onanism from the corporation.
Whatever the reason, it says much about today's Birtian Beeb. It certainly wouldn't - even if award-winning independent companies had been queueing up to produce it for free - have happened in John Charles Reith's time. Reith was the first directorgeneral of the BBC and his unwavering adherence to the ruling, establishment line marks him out as a British version of John Charles McQuaid. Indeed, Reith did for his native aristocracy what McQuaid did for the Irish Catholic Church.
The Golden Age of Lord Reith was, like the Golden Age of Archbishop McQuaid, one of complete moral censorship. Even though it was in all the newspapers, the BBC made no mention of King Edward's nookie with Wallis Simpson. Regional accents too were banned and any woman who pitched up for work without stockings would find herself out on her ear. Working for 6'7" Johnny Reith was a serious business.
It was serious because Reith was as serious about himself as a man can get. Back in 1967, he engaged in a trio of televised conversations with Malcolm Muggeridge. Lord Reith Looks Back became a portrait of a man (of two men actually, because Muggeridge was just as pompously in love with his own sense of his own gravitas) utterly convinced of his austere, moral judgments. Indeed, the first 75minute segment of that series was titled "I Was Meant To Do Something In The World". So what? So were all your listeners and viewers, Johnny.
Still, the suggestion in Auntie: The Inside Story that Reith had "a positive contempt for the listener" was probably excessive. His contempt wasn't so much positive as a by-product of his own faith in himself. Back in 1983 - 13 years after his death - the BBC made Reith, a dramatised account of the life and work of the great man. It concentrated on politics and power, almost totally ignoring the BBC's business of making and broadcasting programmes.
Even in the matters of politics and power, Reith (the drama) was designed to glorify the image of Reith (the man). It conveniently ignored a number of damning points relating to Reith's handling of Britain's general strike in 1926. Reith, whenever the interests of his own class were threatened, wasn't so much a nannyish auntie as a ruthless godfather. He is often credited with saving the Beeb from formal government control. But, seeing as he was more establishment than the establishment, the establishment really didn't have to worry too much.
In fairness, this new series' debunking, albeit mild, of the Reith myth, marked some progress for The Truth about the early BBC. Perhaps the Beeb wanted the story to be told but felt less guilty or traitorous in having an independent company do the telling. And there is much excellent footage here, probably the funniest being the response to Winston Churchill's V-sign to a group of British soldiers and their tanks.
Acknowledging their prime minister's salutation, the tank lads, as one, replied with V-signs of their own. However, unlike their leader, they kept their palms facing themselves. It wasn't a deliberate "up yours" to Churchill (who varied the direction of his Vsigns himself) but, given what the palm-inwards version of the sign has come to mean, it looked very funny. Auntie: The Inside Story deserves both variations of the Vsign and, in spite of some predictable PR, the Churchillian form should dominate.
Back on RTE, football and politics dominated the week. Like the BBC, government control of, and interference with, RTE, remains largely an untold story. Of course there was Sean Lemass's remark in 1965 that Telifis Eireann was just "another arm of government" and there was Section 31. But much of the political distortion that hit RTE came from within - its history as marked by a cosy Workers' Party putsch as by any Reith-like dictatorship.
It was funny then to see Mary McAleese, a former victim of the putsch, preparing to become President McAleese on The Race For The Park. There was never any risk that it would turn into a "Let's Open Up Old Wounds Show". But a wider public has become aware, as a result of this Presidential election, of political agendas which have been promoted within RTE.
The Race For The Park was dull, hampered by a format designed to ensure parity of treatment for all five candidates. Dana was in the middle, confidently smiling her way past questions she didn't like. A projection of naivety - whether that naivety is real or false - can be a useful television tactic. But Dana went too far this time and a tiny bit of Vincent Browne-ish needle slipped in between her and Miriam O'Callaghan.
Adi Roche, seated on Dana's screen left (fair enough), finally started to say the solid stuff she should have been saying from the start. Marketed as a lighter-thanair, thoroughly altruistic, tame Celtic Tigeress, Roche needed Reithian gravitas from early on. In the event, it came too late. Derek Nally's gruff wholesomeness always seemed genuine but his campaign, once John Caden and Eoghan Harris got at it, made Partition the crucial fault-line in this election.
So, the Marys - McAleese and Banotti - pulled away from the rest to make this, in truth, a two mare race. Banotti, despite the carry-on of some in her party, fought honourably. But McAleese, slightly detached on screen left (or the far right from her perspective) just had to avoid major blunders. She did. For her future visits to RTE, she could reasonably display the Churchillian version of the Vsign, always remembering that the other version would more accurately reflect the feelings of some of her unreconstructed RTE enemies.
The football was at least more exciting than the politics. But our prospects now of reaching France are grim. Eoin Hand played in the old Eamon Dunphy role and, though he performed better than most of those who have been tried out alongside Johnny Giles, the pairing still lacked the dynamism of World Cup occasions past. Still, there's hope and Belgium are not pressure-free. But a TV-orchestrated, national jamboree in summer 1998 is now unlikely.
In drama this week, Gold, a soaped-up sequel to the prostitute-opera, Band Of Gold, debuted. Carol (Cathy Tyson) has inherited a £4 million fortune from a satisfied client and Rose (Geraldine James), having taken a course, wants a job where she won't have to work in the horizontal position. To establish its grittiness, Gold managed to include words like "slag", "wank" and "bollox" in the first five minutes.
There was guff about "an old Greek bloke" who liked to have his private parts "washed and dried with a hair-dryer". This was not Reithian television. In fact, it was unnecessarily coarse and going out at 9 p.m., it was actually indefensible. Gritty realism is fine but when abused it is just gratuitous. Anyway, after the furious flurry of opening vulgarities, Gold opted for a kind of Coronation Street naturalism with a more acceptable quota of bold words added.
It is a condition of Carol's retaining her fortune that she not return to prostitution. But the son of the late (but satisfied) chickenfarmer, who left her the loot, is being cajoled by his appalling girlfriend to get Carol to crack. As a plot device, this is reasonable enough. But the prostitutes (retired and practising) in Gold are just too vibrant, too avaricious for life, to be credible.
Each two-part story in this new series reunites Carol and Rose with a colleague from the past. This week, they encountered Pauline, who may, or may not, be a killer. There's a difference between a series about seediness and a seedy series. Unfortunately, Gold, despite its excellent cast, wallows - sometimes quite obscenely - in seediness. It's not as abysmal as Prisoner In Cell Block H but there's something about tough-women drama series that makes them seem like parodies.
Finally, On Side. John Inverdale is the presenter of this new BBC sports magazine but he wouldn't have made the team under John Reith. Still, though he's laddish and suspiciously over-composed, Inverdale did have worthwhile guests in Frankie Dettori, Chris Eubank, Evander Holyfield, Jacques Villeneuve and Johann Cruyff. The late kick-off time (10.40 p.m.) tells you that this is meant to be a sports show for grown-ups and, for the most part, it is.
Cruyff, when asked which of the two - England or Holland - had a better chance of winning next year's World Cup replied: "Brazil". Eubank, when asked to predict a winner should Holyfield meet Lennox Lewis, said: "The best man". Dettori, pressed to reveal whether he was for England or Italy in the recent World Cup clash, replied: "Italy". But then, football isn't Frankie's sport. Truth, like the BBC seems to have realised, can be easier told when it's less pertinent to yourself.