A series that gives Leavers few reasons for regret
Britons have historically struggled to pay real attention to the EU. It was a grey, obscure place where grey, obscure people passed regulations to make bananas square or egg cartons decimal. We have never given its giant, 750-member Parliament the same attention that we give our own, and some of us pay little enough mind to that.
Now Channel 4 hopes to address this imbalance, just as Britain prepares to leave. Carry on Brussels follows various MEPS through their “curious glass palace” as they struggle to find purpose in an institution they will soon be kicked out of.
In last night’s opener, we met Seb Dance, a fresh-faced Labour MEP who chose to immerse himself in the minutiae of committee negotiations. Occasionally he read out abusive emails from Brexiteers and laughed sadly. Alyn Smith of the SNP held a reception but was chagrined when his opponents scarfed down the nibbles without mingling. Ukip’s Gerard Batten, visibly embittered by his long battle with Brussels bureaucracy, skirmished with his press officer as he tried to drum up publicity for an alternative Brexit plan so impeccably Eurosceptic that it regarded Article 50 itself as an irredeemable instrument of appeasement. Clearly, it’s no fun to
regard your whole job as a farce.
In style, Carry on Brussels closely resembled BBC Two’s Inside the Commons, but the comparison is not purely flattering. That programme managed to cast the Mother of Parliaments in a warm light, as body of hard-working if hard-nosed idealists whose work was genuinely important. Here, by contrast, there was an air of well-intentioned pointlessness, which the sly tone did little to dispel.
Perhaps that is down to the European Parliament’s strange political position: despite representing an enormous number of people, it does not have much power compared to the other EU institutions, so the EU looks undemocratic; yet if it were to take more power it would be accused of seeking to supersede national governments. Either way, the show made MEPS’ work look like so much displacement activity.
It was the emotional beats and personalities that proved most enjoyable. At one point, after clearing a difficult political hurdle, Seb Dance broke into tears, saying: “My mum would be very proud – if she could see me.” There is indeed a nobility in serving one’s post after one’s own people have voted to abolish it. But based on this episode, Carry on Brussels will give Leavers few reasons for regret. Laurence Dodds
‘It’s worth remembering that all medicines do harm,” Chris van Tulleken told a group of parents and grandparents in The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (BBC One). Episode one of this thought-provoking two-part experiment – a follow-up to van Tulleken’s 2016 programme about over-prescribing for adults – explored why we are giving our children three-and-a-half times as many drugs as we did in the late Seventies.
He found a nation of parents hooked on pills as a response to a “crying baby” or “misbehaving child”, and an industry exploiting parents’ emotions for profit. The likeable TV doctor, who spent 10 years working in the NHS, visited a mother who had bottles of Calpol – paracetamol dissolved in a sweet tasting syrup – in almost every room. One GP’S assertion that “Calpol is the heroin of childhood” seemed apt. There were more syringes in her kitchen drawer than Ewan Mcgregor had in Trainspotting.
Of course, this being pop science, van Tulleken had to fill plastic containers with 5,000 litres of pink gloop to show how much of the stuff is bought every day. It was fun but not particularly illuminating.
More startling were the sequences involving some of the more than 60,000 children in the UK who are taking regular doses of the stimulant Ritalin to deal with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The drug’s side-effects include stunted growth and personality change.
Van Tulleken met Amsterdam University professor Susan Bögels, who has been treating the disorder with mindfulness meditation techniques, and was doing a session in the UK for the first time. It was chaos. “I just wanted it to end,” said van Tulleken.
Six weeks later, though, the results seemed transformative. It is parents and practitioners who have to be convinced, however, and drug use is rising. Van Tulleken’s film, which next week tackles the prescribing of anti-depressants for teenagers, was a fascinating and sincere attempt to offer an alternative. Chris Harvey
Carry on Brussels ★★★
The Doctor Who Gave Up Drug ★★★★