The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
SIMON HEFFER HINTERLAND
“I think I do now,” said Christopher Timothy. “Now that you’ve mentioned it.”
Ah get away with you, Channel 4, with your cool young folk and their edgy chat!
You may not have witnessed this exchange yourself; other TV moments had more traction. But I, in a desperate bid for peace of mind, am on election avoidance, so I was watching a repeat of
Great British Car Journeys which I’d recorded the week before. I believe the wee itself happened in 2017.
Nevertheless, it’s just what I was in the mood for. These two ex-stars of All Creatures Great and Small take pootling road trips around Britain – in this case from Cardiff to Snowdon – avoiding dual carriageways and satnavs. The noisiest thing in the programme is the groans of the former TV vets as they climb in and out of their low-slung car.
Thus it announces itself as a possible successor to Timothy West and Prunella Scales’s muchloved Great Canal Journeys (which has a pleasing circularity, since their son Sam West is about to play Siegfried Farnon for Channel 5.)
When Great British Car Journeys first went out in
February this year, the Telegraph reviewer said it was “dull” and that “tension was elusive”. I don’t know what kind of adrenalin junkie that reviewer is; I find there’s quite enough tension in the world, thanks very much. Thank God for gentle pace! Regular readers may remember how much I enjoyed the recent Downton Abbey film, which revolves primarily around the cliffhanger: will the boiler be mended in time for the King’s visit? Wonderful.
So you can imagine how delighted I was by a travelogue with lines like: “As Chris is at the wheel, it’s my turn to delve into our collection of old motoring guides.”
The two presenters are probably the most immediately likeable people currently on television.
Not that they are uncontroversial. Peter Davison got into a full-scale Twitterstorm a couple of years ago. And a journalist for the Yorkshire Post once said that Christopher Timothy gave “the most profanityladen interview I’ve ever carried out”. (Mind you, Timothy was only 71 at the time. He may have matured since then.)
The Davison controversy was spectacularly unfair, perfectly illustrating how happy people have become to attack others for things they simply didn’t say.
The story was that Peter Davison had spoken out against Jodie Whittaker being cast in his former role as the protagonist in Doctor Who. Her Doctor’s appointment, you might say.
In fact, Mr Davison had openly welcomed the news, offering his “best wishes and full confidence” and insisting that “those who are uncertain should be encouraged to watch it with an open mind”.
He then reflected mildly that, as a viewer himself, “I quite like the idea of the Doctor as a boy but maybe I’m an old-fashioned dinosaur” and that he felt “a bit sad” about “the loss of a role model for boys”.
It was a gentle and personal observation, yet Colin Baker, his immediate successor in the part, bustled in to slam the remarks as “complete rubbish”. I don’t see how it can be rubbish to voice one’s own feelings, but that unpleasant critique was as nothing to the roar of the online mob, for whom Peter Davison might as well have laid waste to a women’s refuge with a Gatling gun.
After that experience with the internet, it’s no wonder Peter Davison is happy to lock himself in an old car and pretend it’s 1930.
The show interested me particularly because I devised and host a Radio 4 series called Women Talking About Cars. The joke is that however hard I try to stay on the subject of carburettors and suspension, I always end up talking to my guests about what happens inside cars: the arguments and adventures, school runs and honeymoons, daydreams and brainwaves, sentiments and memories. It’s intended to be affectionately satirical of the difference between men’s conversation and women’s.
And this TV series, in a way, shows exactly what I’m sending up about men. When Peter Davison mentioned that his father was a member of the RAC, instead of then talking about what kind of chap he was (what else was he a member of? Where did he take his family in the car? What did Peter Davison learn or reject about how to be a father?), they simply had a long chat about roadside assistance boxes, throwing eventually to a VT about AA patrolmen.
Later, as they met a local shopkeeper, Mr Davison murmured: “I grew up in a sweet shop.” I had so many questions about that! None of which was asked or answered by the three men, who dived eagerly into a detailed discussion of the parking restrictions on Aberystwyth high street.
Yet, as I said, I loved the gentle pace. It was therapeutic and refreshing. And why would I assume its single-minded focus was anything to do with maleness? Hark at me with my gender assumptions! I’m even more of a dinosaur than Peter Davison! When this column is published, I shan’t look at the Twitter comments.
The noisiest thing is the groans of the men as they climb out of their low-slung car