The BBC’s big new star? Cannabis
I THOUGHT I would at least try the BBC’s two new autumn dramas, Us and Life. Well, I have tried them and stopped watching them.
Apart from their incessant anti-marriage propaganda, in which the married family is portrayed pretty much as the root of all evil, they use respectable, much-liked actors and actresses to normalise drug-taking.
Middle-aged respectable Tom Hollander, in Us, is shown boasting in Amsterdam to his son about his youthful drug use, trying to be hip by using druggie jargon (‘I had a massive whitey’). Middle-aged respectable Alison Steadman, in revolt against her nasty, belittling husband in Life, is shown on a doorstep sharing a joint with the much-liked ‘disability ambassador’ Melissa Johns, who previously played Imogen Pascoe in Coronation Street.
This is pretty much product placement. In the case of Life, it is also a direct breach of the BBC’s own rules against portraying crime in drama, as they well know. But nothing will happen.