The Beeb’s baffling show about air traffic control fails to take off
Dangling by a scrap of cotton from a drawing pin in the ceiling at NATS, the air traffic control nerve centre in Hampshire, there’s a tatty plastic cherub — a guardian angel for Britain’s guardians of the skies. Somehow, that doesn’t breed much confidence.
The operations room of the national air Traffic Service in Hampshire is a neon-lit warehouse, filled with people on swivel chairs staring at blodgy dots on screens. Probably this is state-of-the-art tech, but it did all look like table-top computer games from an Eighties theme pub.
The controllers’ main qualification appears to be an ability to intone, very quickly in a nasal voice, ‘Jersey Five Echo Bravo, cancel the hold, leave lambourne 265 degrees,’ while tweaking a series of buttons.
There may be more to it than this, but we didn’t get a chance to find out on Skies Above Britain (BBC2) — a documentary with an attention span so short, it was apparently directed by a hyperactive schoolboy.
like many BBC2 facts-and-stats shows, this one consisted of interlocking segments. But every item had been chopped into bits and all the pieces shuffled. The effect was like looking in a broken mirror — instead of a coherent picture, all we saw were fragments.
The air traffic controllers got het up because a light aircraft had drifted into controlled airspace over gatwick, but before we could understand what was going on, the action switched to RaF Coningsby, where a Typhoon fighter jet was being scrambled. The pilot didn’t go to gatwick, though: instead, he intercepted an airliner over Bristol.
a message direct from Downing Street came over the airwaves, telling the pilot to shoot it down. This had escalated rather alarmingly. The Typhoon waggled its wings but, instead of loosing off an air-to-air missile, it turned for home. That had been just an exercise.
We met the fighter pilot, briefly, but he said he had to ‘go for a wee-wee’ and we were left looking at a grey door on Coningsby air base as it slowly swung shut.
By now i was starting to worry that somehow i’d contracted jet lag and was hallucinating. But the show zigzagged on: a vintage aircraft enthusiast talked about the crash that killed his father, a coastguard searchand-rescue helicopter was called out, and an RaF trainee pilot used a simulator that generated so much g-force, his eyebrows crossed.
it lacked a team of presenters to tie the disparate bits together, the way Coast or Countryfile can. Only one segment at the end really worked — a hillside rescue in heavy fog, with the helicopter flying blind within a few feet of rockface. That was terrific television, but too many viewers will have given up in confusion long before.
The value of good presenters was proved by TV’s most adorable travellers, Prunella Scales and husband Timothy West, in their latest series of Great Canal Journeys (C4).
The couple are a joy to watch — teasing, quibbling and, during this romantic trip to Venice, flirting, too.
‘Do you love canals more than me?’ Pru asked her boat-mad hubbie. He just chuckled. Fifty-three years of marriage have taught him that it’s safer not to answer some questions. But she kept probing: ‘Would you allow me a lover or two if we were Venetian?’
Tim thought it over. This was the city of the great roues Byron and Casanova, after all. ‘You’re a bit of a snob,’ he conceded, ‘so go for it — have lord Byron!’
as ever, 81-year-old Tim’s confidence at the helm occasionally outstripped his ability to steer. They pootled along the grand Canal as barges and gondolas jostled past: ‘i’m scared out of my socks,’ Pru muttered.
in the winding back-canals it got worse. The boat bumped off every wall and bridge, with Tim crying out cheerfully, ‘Oh fart!’ and ‘That was a balls-up!’
The visits to la Fenice opera house, and the palace prison of the tragic bride, la Malcontenta, were pleasantly informative. But really, we’d be quite happy just sailing round in circles with these two.