Plenty to enjoy, even if you know zip about hemming
This month, thanks to Euro 2016, the mainstream channels are catering for a mostly male audience. It presents programmes like The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC Two) with an open goal: the chance to recruit female viewers as the competition enters the business end of the knockout stages. And, before anyone slaps a gender-stereotyping charge on this column, be advised that last night’s quarter-final was contested by a chatty coven of five women, the presenter is a woman as is one of the judges. The other judge is the token bloke.
The programme’s off-the-peg template is mainly the same as the one used for The Great British Bake Off. What puts it into a narrower niche is the level of knowledge asked of those parked on the sofa. To engage fully with the skill required to knock up an outfit in, say, the time it takes to watch a football match, you sort of need a bit about the demands of making a powermesh bra or a raglan sleeve.
The role of Claudia Winkleman is to demystify the process. This she does mainly via high-octane enthusiasm and frequent cheerful professions of ignorance. Among other pleasures is the comical mismatch of the judges: Patrick Grant is a beanpole in tailored pinstripes, while Esme Young is a force of nature in a power bob. The frenetic edit keeps up the pace, the camera rarely settling on a seamstress for longer than a few seconds, which means that the stress is less on technique than personality.
So even if you know zip about hemming, there’s plenty to enjoy. Amateur seamstresses are a fun, selfdeprecating bunch with a nice line in back-of-the-bus camaraderie. They spent the quarter-final groaning at this week’s challenge: to fashion from an array of nasty synthetic fabrics a man’s cycling top, a child’s ski jacket and a woman’s yoga outfit.
This episode’s casualty was, alas, Rumana. A shame as her witty ski jacket on an avian theme complete with wings and beak has novelty niche potential among junior female ski jumpers.
Where to now for the skills format? Competitive emulsioning? No thanks. Plumbing? Bit messy. A show about woodwork would work. They could call it Hammer Heads or Vice Squad. Who wouldn’t watch that?
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. It’s an odd maxim for a programme about Accident and Emergency, but 24
Hours in A&E (Channel 4) is nearing the end of its 11th series and shows no sign of conceptual depreciation. Why? There’s a simple diagnosis. Like its stablemate 24 Hours in
Police Custody, the limitless flow of stories from the sharp end of public service makes it a factual version of a variety show.
The show mixed things up a bit after half a dozen series by switching from King’s College Hospital to St George’s Hospital in Tooting. The main story of this episode was a familiar one. 24
Hours in A&E has traditionally made grim viewing for bikers, with more than one serious injury per series, the rider usually coming off badly.
On this occasion Michelle, 50, returning from a rally in the Isle of Man, rode into a lamppost and broke her right arm so badly it punctured the skin. A camera hovered over her face as nurses, family and finally a doctor crowded around. From interviews carried out after the event, a few rapid brushstrokes established the psychological profile of a free spirit in leathers facing, potentially, the end of the road on two wheels.
There’s nothing about the programme that suggests it is a political football. The format is rigidly observational – the cameras quietly prowl corridors, keeping an ear out for stories (and people prepared to sign a release form).
One medical professional per episode talks about the rigours of the job – this week it was re-sus nurse Emily, whose mother and grandmother were both nurses and who played nurse with her dolls as a child. Eleanor, 33, who had cut her thumb on a meat cleaver at home, was due in hospital a week later to give birth. She too remembered plays mothers and babies with her dolls.
The show, whose tone is admirably discreet, specialises in soft echoes and quiet ironies. Timothy, 70, limped in to A&E having cycled into the back of a stationary ambulance. Like Eleanor he had cancer in his back story. Both talked of seizing the day. Timothy returned to his bike to raise money as Michelle prepared for one last ride. A bit like life, 24 Hours in A&E is mostly moreish. The Great British Sewing Bee 24 Hours in A&E