Del: Cheer up Britain
SIR David Jason is urging TV execs to commission cheery shows as today’s telly is cruel and heartless.
The Only Fools And Horses Del Boy legend, 80, wants crowd- pleasers such as his The Darling Buds Of May show resurrected.
He says people have lost touch with kindness and encouraging families to gather round the telly can help heal Britain’s rifts.
Sir David wrote in his new autobiography, A Del Of A Life: “It’s just a fact of life that today’s programmes favour the hardhitting, the callow, the angry. There’s an increasing harshness to things.
“Fashion and commercial pressures alike encourage the extreme. The tone is louder, more shouty.
“There’s less sense of television as an entertainment that we sometimes gather together for as families, and more sense of it as something consumed individually… it’s not the great unifier that it once was.”
Sir David, who played Pop Larkin in 1990s hit Darling Buds alongside Catherine ZetaJones, added: “That show we made was pure escapism at a time when people seemed to need it. And if people needed it then, my sense is that people need it even more now.”
VERY few people have cheered us up over the years as much as Sir David Jason.
The beloved actor made us howl with laughter playing characters such as Del Boy and Pop Larkin.
So that automatically makes him an authority on the state of British telly.
And he’s absolutely right to say things have been too bleak on the box for years now.
The comedy legend reckons it has been making us all angrier. Perhaps he’s on to something. Binge- watching depressing crime dramas or weekly misery- fests like Eastenders hardly perk us up.
We could all do with more heartwarming shows like Only Fools or The Darling Buds Of May.
Now, in particular, would be as good a time as any for TV bosses to reverse the trend and commission stuff that’s good for the soul.
Who knows, this time next year they might even be millionaires.