To the Gogglebox jokers, Brexit is just another TV reality show
Gogglebox: Brexit Special Suspects: The Enemy Within
POLITICS on TV used to matter in this country. We groaned about the inescapable party broadcasts, shown simultaneously on BBC and ITV — but, like cod liver oil and cold showers, we believed they were good for us.
Not any more. Gogglebox: Brexit Special (C4) demonstrated that Brits regard Westminster as a thirdrate reality contest, and the families on their sofas, watching the news unfold after the EU referendum, treated it like an edition of I’m An MP . . .Get Me Out Of Here!
That’s the greatest problem facing both the Conservatives and Labour as they attempt to bind their fractured parties: voters have become utterly cynical.
During the whole of this hour-long programme, no one voiced a real, heartfelt belief. It was all quips and sneers, disgust for the politicians and the media alike.
For many of the viewers featured on the show, more used to commenting on soaps and wildlife documentaries, their reaction to Brexit was trivial. Would the local shop have to stop stocking their favourite Polish yoghurt? Would it be harder to buy brie?
Others were distracted by insignificant details, like the housefly buzzing around Boris Johnson as he hailed the referendum results. ‘Forget any points for Eurovision, we’ll always be at the bottom now,’ grumbled the Siddiquis in Derby.
Judge whether you care what they think, after brothers Baasit, Raza and Umar posted a photo of themselves on Facebook this week, wearing camouflage uniforms for a paintballing day, and captioned it: ‘ISIS training day, look how happy we look.’
Some of the comments were more insightful. Stephen in Brighton, in shorts and T-shirt to show off his tattoos, watched footage of Jeremy Corbyn entering his scruffy Islington flat and exclaimed in disbelief, ‘No! That’s not his house? It’s like a squat. You can imagine inside, it’s piles of magazines and bags of tins.’
And the vicar of Blyth and Scrooby, the Rev Kate Bottley, her feet draped as usual over husband Graham’s lap, surveyed the men jostling to win nominations for the Tory leadership and dismissed it as ‘a willy-wangling contest’.
The relentlessly trivial tone is exacerbated by Gogglebox’s editors, who make sure we never miss the sight of a layabout in a stained tracksuit, scratching himself or cleaning his ear with a finger.
Still, they can’t be such slobs that they haven’t changed their clothes for six weeks. Whether they were watching David Cameron’s resignation speech, Angela Eagle’s campaign launch or Nigel Farage’s taunts at the European Parliament, their outfits never changed. Even the mugs on the coffee table didn’t move. They weren’t watching the news live. Instead, the production team must have given them a reel of news highlights on DVD, and filmed as they watched the whole lot in one go.
Every aside was rehearsed with the benefit of hindsight, and honed over weeks. A pointless fraud.
We were cheated, too, by Suspects: The Enemy Within (C5), the improvised police drama starring Fay Ripley as a crime-pickled copper leading a station of rookies.
Fay has been tempted back to Cold Feet, which begins on ITV this autumn. In a fit of spite, Suspects didn’t give her a carriage clock as a farewell present — instead, a gangland nightclub owner crept into her bedroom and shot her in the head. The story was told with a blood-stained pillow.
None of her officers seemed to care. The plot became ridiculous when the killer persuaded police to drop the charges, by threatening that something nasty might happen to Detective Constable Charlie (Clare-Hope Ashitey). He knew where she lived, you see.
Suspects partly redeemed itself with a clever twist. But its biggest problem is that — thanks to BBC3’s brilliant Murder In Successville, starring celebrity impressionists as cops and crooks — this set-up looks deliriously comical.
To cap it all, Fay’s replacement, DCI Dan Drummond (James Murray), with his suspiciously tinted hair, is a ringer for Cliff Richard. Another case for the Successville murder squad?