Can the BBC tackle racism in one hour? Unsurprisingly, no
Panorama is a haphazard affair. For every newsworthy exclusive – such as last month’s smuggled footage of Dubai’s Princess Latifa Al Maktoum – there is a programme that misses the mark. Let’s Talk About Race (BBC One) fell into the latter category.
Investigative programmes require a sharp focus. Here, there was none. Naga Munchetty travelled around the UK “to understand what race and racism mean in the UK today”, a subject simply too big for the confines of a one-hour programme.
The subject is a personal one for Munchetty: the BBC Breakfast host was reprimanded by the corporation’s editorial complaints unit in 2019 for suggesting that Donald Trump had made a racist statement. The decision was promptly reversed by an embarrassed BBC management.
If Munchetty had made an entirely personal programme, it could have been a good one. We got glimpses of it, when she recalled childhood racism and revealed some of the vile emails she is sent by strangers. But it felt as if she was holding back from saying more. Instead, we got a meandering hour in which Munchetty spoke to people about their experiences of racism.
The stories were worth listening to. A grandmother who came over from
Jamaica in 1961 to work as a nurse was asked if she was welcomed by the English. “You’re joking! We’re still not welcome.” Her grandson had experienced prejudice at school and beyond, and said there were many places in which he felt uncomfortable as a young black man. Black fathers expressed fears for their sons.
The programme began with scenes of the Black Lives Matter protests, but also took in racism towards people of east and south-east Asian heritage over the Covid outbreak, higher Covid death rates in the BAME community, and British Asian teenagers worrying about college and job prospects.
For balance, Munchetty interviewed a white scaffolder called Nigel who was pictured defending the Bristol cenotaph during the BLM protests. He lost work afterwards because people perceived him as a racist. “Nigel says he’s not racist but passions were aroused on all sides that day,” said Munchetty, which didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement.
She also went to Blyth in Northumberland, an area of high deprivation, where a father and son had somehow been selected to represent the white race when it came to talking about white privilege. The son understood the concept, the father was offended by it. A series set somewhere like Blyth, exploring these feelings in depth, might make useful viewing.
Jimmy Mcgovern’s Moving On (BBC One) is back to inject a bit of drama into the daytime schedules. It has been hailed as a modern Play for Today, but think of it more as an episode of Casualty without the recurring characters or the medical bits. Well, without many medical bits.
Anxious bridegroom Ben was outside the church, worrying because his best man had gone Awol on the morning of the wedding. His proud mum, Lucy, was there to calm his nerves. And then she spotted a man in the pews who turned out to be Ian, her husband and Ben’s father, “back from the dead”.
“You weren’t supposed to see me,” said Ian, although if you’re trying to remain incognito after two decades of being presumed dead, maybe taking a seat in an otherwise empty church isn’t the best way of going about it? But this is a 45-minute drama, and there’s a lot to get through.
Mcgovern created Moving On but the episodes are written by others. This script was from David Chidlow and delivered an effective first few minutes. We quickly knew the set-up and the fact that Ian had left due to a family trauma, which we waited until near the end to discover. The best man storyline was ticking away in the background, ready to be wound into a neat plot resolution.
The acting from Nico Mirallegro (Rillington Place, Murdered for Being Different) as Ben was decent, and from Mcgovern veterans Marie Critchley and Mark Womack as his parents. But it all slid into sentimentality, and I had to stifle a groan when Ian announced that he only had six months to live. This is the stuff of Eastenders (and I am, in my bones, a Coronation Street viewer).
Ian was self-pitying, Lisa was the stoic one who had held it together through her heartbreak for the sake of her boy. A drama in the prime-time schedule might have done something with these characters, played with our expectations or our sympathies; it could have asked if we were being too quick to judge Ian as a coward for walking out on his family, rather than examining the impact of grief. But daytime dramas rarely go deep. Panorama: Let’s Talk About Race ★★ Jimmy Mcgovern’s Moving On ★★