The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review Mary was contrary but she was also right (occasionally)
WHAT time do you call this? By 7am, Mary Whitehouse would have fed the birds, prayed, and done her daily exercise before having breakfast with her husband. Suitably fortified, she would begin the day’s work of turning back the tide of filth she reckoned was forever washing up on British shores.
Such detail was the stuff of Banned! The Mary Whitehouse
Story (BBC2, Tuesday). Mrs W and the media have formed a mutual fascination society down the years. Before this two part documentary, there was a drama, with Julie Walters playing Whitehouse, and as the archivist of her work says, every now and then someone writes an article along the lines of “Was Mary Whitehouse right?”
Well, was she? The consensus here seemed to be that she wasn’t by and large, but she did have a point about the corrosive effects of porn. As will be seen in part two, she was way ahead of her time in child protection.
Whitehouse did most of the talking for herself in archive interviews, with no shortage of critics having their say. Some of the sharpest attacks came from the BBC at the time. The default setting from the high heid yins was contemptuous. She was not to be encouraged lest the viewers, heaven forbid, agreed with her.
One of the more inventive responses came from Johnny Speight, writer of Till Death Do Us Part, a show she hated, natch. Speight wrote her into the script, with Alf Garnett (Warren Mitchell) quoting from her book, Cleaning Up TV. The tome was duly chucked into the fire by Alf’s daughter (Una Stubbs), thus giving Whitehouse, in her own words,
“the dubious honour of being the only author to have a book publicly burned on television”.
As one contributor said, it didn’t do to underestimate Mrs W. Hannah Berryman’s wise and slyly funny film avoided that mistake.
We can probably guess what the cardiganned crusader would have made of Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars (BBC1, Thursday). Odd title, thought I naively, until #FFS appeared in the corner of the screen. Surely the sweary chef wasn’t going
to bring that Channel 4 language of his to Aunty’s house? He did, but it was minor by his standards and it was after the watershed. Still, I expect letters to the Radio Times.
More of an eyebrow-raiser was the format: 12 young food and drink entrepreneurs competing for a £150k investment from Ramsay. It bore a remarkable resemblance to The Apprentice, which only finished last week. Give the body time to get cold, chaps. Unless the industry are going to do with The Apprentice what they did with The Great British Bake Off and apply the template to anything that moves (“Twelve jungle creatures: who will get the contents of Sir
David Attenborough’s Post Office account?”)
Another oddly worded title, How to Sleep Well with Michael Mosley (BBC2, Thursday), but the former doctor turned journalist (how scary would it be if it were the other way around?) was his usual model of clarity and good sense.
Society is in the middle of a sleep crisis, Mosley reported. While one third of us struggled with sleep prepandemic, two years on the figure is one in two, the highest it has ever been. Mosley included himself in the ranks of the bleary-eyed. Did science have anything new to say on the subject he wondered. Cue various
trials, one of which required him to stay up all night. Only the dog kept him company, but it soon fell asleep. Traitor.
Much more is known about the heavy price paid when we don’t get enough sleep, including heart problems and links to Alzheimer’s, but what to do about it remains the question. Meanwhile, there was practical advice, such as no screens in bed, unless you were watching this. I’m defo up for napping like an Olympic athlete: 30 minutes max, between 1pm4pm.
Two dramas prepped for their finales: the newbie
Holding (STV, Monday) and long-running
Peaky Blinders (BBC1, Sunday). Of the two, the gold medal went to Graham Norton’s tale of love and death in small
town Ireland, largely because it had Brenda Fricker knocking it out of the park with a Bennettesque monologue about her character’s fateful teenage years.
As for Peaky, it raced towards what will be a feature-length conclusion, with everyone heading for hell in a handcart steered by Tommy (Cillian Murphy). Whisper it, but perhaps Peaky is bowing out just at the right time. After six series of portentousness it has got to the point where noone speaks like a normal person any more. I doubt that Tommy could order a bacon roll without making it sound as though the end of the world was nigh.
But we shall be there tomorrow, comrades, 9pm, by order, for the last time on television, of the Peaky Blinders. Sniff.