Relax, Charlie Dimmock’s back and everything’s rosy again . . .
CURTAil Question Time, cancel newsnight or chop 20 minutes off The Andrew Marr show, and the majority of viewers in the real world, beyond the Westminster Bubble, would hardly notice the difference.
But start messing about with gardening programmes and people would rise up in revolt, brandishing their spades like pitchforks.
BBC bosses know this all too well. They found out the hard way, a few years ago, when they tried to ‘update’ Gardeners’ World to make it ‘trendy’. it was a disaster: everyone likes Monty Don just the way he is, thank you very much.
But not all gardening telly has to be traditional and respectful. Given the popularity of all kinds of home improvement shows and makeover formats, there’s plainly an appetite for programmes packed with ideas for making our backyards better. Alan Titchmarsh has been doing it on iTV for ages with love Your Garden, and the Beeb’s belated answer is Garden Rescue (BBC1).
When the series launched on daytime TV last year, it was notable for the return of Charlie Dimmock. Once famous for bringing a bit of bounce to the nation’s flowerbeds, she almost disappeared from our screens for more than a decade, following the end of the instant landscaping show, Ground Force. she’s a natural broadcaster, and a talented garden designer, so her reappearance is welcome.
her co-stars are Chelsea Flower show veterans harry and David Rich, brothers with an arty approach to gardening: they are constantly thinking about how the light falls, which might sound pretentious but turns out to be highly practical.
in contrast to Charlie’s ad-libbing and impromptu style, harry has an earnest tendency to turn and do little pieces to camera, like a Blue Peter presenter. his brother doesn’t say much, though he has impressive Renaissance hair — give him a cape and he could be the keyboard player in a prog rock band.
Between them, they came up with a barrowload of interesting suggestions for transforming your patio and lawn. instead of putting gravel down, try crushed cockle shells: a bag costs about the same, and apparently it feels like ‘walking on fresh snow, or bubble wrap’.
Charlie recommended planting soft, pale, cool colours such as lilac around areas where you will sit, to make the space feel relaxing. i’m less sure about spending £250 on a full-grown amelanchier ‘June berry’ tree to attract the birds, when you could pick up a sapling in a pot for a fiver at a garden centre.
nurture it for a few years, and you get the same tree for next to nothing.
But that’s the chief problem with any makeover format — it demands instant results.
The prison guards in Florida, charged with scaring a bunch of British teenage delinquents into mending their ways, also wanted instant results on Banged Up: Teens Behind Bars (C4).
American ‘correctional facilities’ always look terrifying on TV, and this one was no exception. Convicts lived like packs of animals, crowded into cages with clear plastic walls.
But the juvenile drug-dealers and thieves who had volunteered to spend a week in this U.s. jail (safely segregated from the other inmates) seemed unworried. They smirked and talked back to the guards, confident that the short, sharp shocks could not involve real beatings or worse.
They knew, too, that British prisons, however unpleasant, are nothing like this.
The entire exercise was ultimately pointless . . . though it did serve as a reminder that, whatever happens, you don’t want to end up behind bars in the states. Porridge it ain’t.