Diamond storytelling to celebrate Queen’s 60-year reign...
WHILE the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s accession to the throne may have passed off quietly – in Kings Lynn of all places – on Monday, the BBC ensured it produced a documentary of her life worthy of the occasion.
It’s likely that when the BBC bigwigs first commissioned The Diamond Queen, one key priority would be finding the very best person to tell the story of her long reign.
Their choice, Andrew Marr, was a fine one. He’s arguably the finest news broadcaster alive today (and there are some very good ones). As the BBC’s political editor he single-handedly made politics both interesting and accessible to millions, a trait continued by his successor Nick Robinson. So when he shuffled off to other projects, I for one was disappointed until he came back with a string of superb series such as The Making of Modern Britain. Oh, and a fantastic book on print journalism.
Marr really can tell a story and, during 18-months following the Queen, he has come up with a three-part series the opener of which was spellbinding.
This was not a plodding chronological story of the Queen’s life as it might have been. Instead it swung gently between current footage of the Queen – visiting Ground Zero in New York, for example, or a two-day visit to North Wales, taking in Llandudno – looking at what she does today and her relevance to modern society. She does a lot as it happens, hundreds of public engagements, handshakes with thousands of people.
Intermittently, it flicked back to archive footage to remind us of the moments and people that have shaped her life.
Access was top drawer: An A-list of Royals: William and Harry and a lovely sequence with Princess Eugenie visiting Bwthyn Bach, an extraordinary half size house on the Windsor estate given to the Queen in 1937). We heard from Major, Blair and watched some of the weekly meeting she has with the current PM (the 11th), which, David Cameron reminded us, was the only time in the week when “there’s nobody else in the room”.
Marr was pitch-perfect. He wasn’t cloying or fawning, he simply told the story of her life and how, even at 85, she remains switched on, well loved and respected and still relevant.
As Marr said, she is “an adornment, but not an ornament”. If you’d seen the whole film you knew what he meant.
Quite what Her Majesty would have made of two young Irish twins with extraordinary haircuts charging round the Tower of London is another thing altogether. But CBBC this week unleashed Jedward’s Big Adventure in which the, er, musical twins learn how to be tour guides at some of Britain’s biggest attractions, including Hadrian’s Wall and Edinburgh.
It’s true they like to play pretty moronic, but this new series worked surprisingly well. Our heroes recruited Jo Swash and Brian Dowling to help them learn about the Tower, Beefeaters, ravens, torture chambers and all. Just prepare yourself for exchanges like: “So you’re a Yo! Man! warder”.
Of course, even Jedward can’t be quite as stupid as they try to make out they are.They tackle their challenges with gusto and the programme actually told the history of the Tower rather well, even handling potentially tricky subjects like the rack and the endless beheadings in a surprisingly effective, even light-hearted fashion. My seven-year-old loved it, really loved it. It was one of those odd marriages in which the producers must have gone Eureka! when they realised two buffoons cartwheeling through history was actually very, very good children’s TV.
Must watch family TV in our house is a Saturday night in with Harry Hill’s TV Burp, which has returned for what many believe will be a final series. The format doesn’t change which is possibly why it has remained so popular and picked up so many prizes over the years. He has his favourite regular targets such as EastEnders, but nothing tickles Hill more than food programmes. Nigel Slater has come in for some merciless ribbing in the past and this week The Fabulous Baker Brothers stepped up to the plate. Hill is in his element with the raised eyebrow aside to innuendo and in FBB they were spooning it up by the ladleful. Parents laugh knowingly (it’s too rude to repeat here) while the kids love the slapstick (a great gag with some dough). I also loved his blank face listening to this Pseuds Corner special from Jonathan Meades in France: “Colonial France had an exceptional quasi-Jesuit faith in the potency of environmental conditioning . . . a sort of cultural osmosis”. And so on. Hill’s derision is priceless. I hope it’s not the end.
Finally, no apologies for mentioning Protecting Our Children for the second week running. This week Annie, a social worker responsible for unborn children, tried to make sense of the chaos of another wretchedly ill-equipped couple, Marva and Shaun (who had already had seven kids taken into care). It seemed a miracle Marva’s baby would ever arrive, but arrive he did only for the mother to throw away her last chance (she was found drunk back round at Shaun’s with a hungry baby left to his own devices). Profoundly depressing, but – surely – award-winning film-making too.
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