RIDES & PREJUDICE
Shows like Channel 5’s Cyclists: Scourge of the Streets? shame the broadcaster and endanger us
Channel 5’s July ‘documentary’ Cyclists: Scourge of the Streets? was a new low for the broadcaster – and this is a channel, remember, that once had Z-list celeb Rebecca Loos pleasuring a pig.
Why beat around the bush with the question mark in the show’s title anyway? ‘Scourge’ doesn’t suggest that balance is going to be the watch word. Even the narration, which in the best documentaries is an impartial device that allows viewers to make up their own minds, is aggressive and accusatory; in his opening monologue, the narrator (actor Craig Kelly) rants that “many motorists see cyclists as scum of the roads”. On Surrey, he says it’s the “pastoral dream – or it was until the cyclists came” with motorists “bumped off the road by swarms of wannabe racers”. By contrast, he introduces the taxi-driving contributors to the show as “three of London’s finest” (including ‘Diamond Danny Sullivan’) as if they’re some sort of heavenly gift to the city. Either Kelly believes this tripe or, like Ron Burgundy, he’ll say out loud to camera whatever’s put in front of him.
The cabbies fret over petty grievances, such as cyclists not wearing ‘crash helmets’, or bike lanes
being quiet out of rush hour. “Where are they all? Oh, they’re at work,” says one, answering his own question, correctly.
“It’s becoming very frightening when you’re driving for a living,” says one of them, oblivious to the disparity in protection he has in his taxi compared to a person on a bike, who is without question the most vulnerable road user.
Advance word of the show had been scathing – Peter Walker’s blog on theguardian.com had called it “undoubtedly the worst, most scaremongering, inaccurate, downright irresponsible programme on cycling I’ve ever seen” after he’d suffered the misfortune of catching a pre-broadcast screening. But this is surely what the channel wanted – programmes like this are nothing more than a TV version of clickbait, working everyone up into a frothy lather.
I’d have switched off before the first commercial break if management hadn’t emailed me beforehand suggesting I watch it, but the appearance of ‘Mr Loophole’, the lawyer Nick Freeman, made me think it’d be simpler to find another way to make a living. Freeman’s sought-after skill is getting celebrity drivers out of speeding charges on technicalities (David Beckham, last year, the most recent), and says in the doc, with a remarkably straight face that, “Cyclists need to comply with the laws of the land in exactly the same way as we do.”
The overarching theme of the doc is that if cyclists are made ‘accountable’ – ie they are forced to wear number plates – all animosity from motorists towards cyclists will evaporate. Almost as if there hasn’t been a speeding infraction, hit-and-run or drunk driver in the 115 years of vehicle registration.
“Everyone appreciates that cycling is good,” says Surrey resident and cyclist-sceptic Ian, though given what we’ve already heard from him thus far in the show you sense a big ‘but’ coming. “But there is a limit on the number of cyclists you can have on our very small roads,” he says off-screen, presumably from behind the wheel of one of those gigantic American-style trucks that he’s shown driving.
I could carry on picking apart the irony, hypocrisy, untruths and ignorance of the show for far longer than the single page I’ve got. It would make me feel marginally better, but it’s not going to make me any safer on the road because the damage sorry excuses for documentary television like this do is incalculable. It will likely be a (rare) ratings hit for Channel 5, and its executives will congratulate themselves, but all it has done is reinforce prejudice and worsen the wellbeing of cyclists on the road.
“Programmes like this are a TV version of clickbait, working everyone up into a frothy lather...”