Five aim to make Glasgow better

Published on Thursday 16 February 2006 01:53

JUSTIN Ryan and Colin McAllister - those camp interior decorators known for theatrical fits - suddenly have a more serious job to do.

The duo are renovating a Glasgow council block as part of a TV experiment to see whether environment really does influence the way people behave. The year-long project, The Estate, likely to be shown at the end of this year, draws on the inspiration of New York's zero-tolerance project, which held that even allowing broken windows to remain unfixed was a precursor to more serious social problems.

For Dan Chambers, Five's director of programmes, the new show is part of the network's twin-track approach for getting current affairs in front of TV viewers. According to Chambers, programmes such as Channel Four's Jamie's School Dinners demonstrated that there is a public appetite for shows which combine entertainment values with a serious message. Chambers cites his own network's So You Think You Can Teach? as another example. The show followed three celebrities as they attempted to teach primary school children, raising a number of questions about the state of teaching.

The Estate began filming last year on the Arden estate in the south of Glasgow, an 1,100-home development built in the 1950s. Chambers says: "We wanted to look at housing, and ask the question about whether or not if the environment was to be improved, could that in some way affect people's lives over and above just living in a nicer environment? Might it cut crime, might it reduce other social problems?"

Chambers stresses that some news issues can only be tackled by a more traditional format of programme, for example the recent Donal MacIntyre investigation Nazi Hate Rock, which probed the links between fascist skinhead bands and the BNP.

However, Chambers believes that current affairs shows are facing an increasingly difficult battle for prominence: "It has got so much tougher now in television with the proliferation of multi-channel that all those areas that are nice to have but don't rate so well have been pushed out of the schedule. It is fairly clear to me that the level of commitment to current affairs isn't what it once was."

As evidence, Chambers cites the demise of World in Action and its replacement with Tonight with Trevor McDonald - a show the he calls "current affairs lite" - as well as the perpetually changing transmission time of the BBC's Panorama.

He also regards the 8pm Monday scheduling for Channel Four's Dispatches as a "graveyard slot", adding: "You are up against EastEnders for half an hour on BBC1 and Coronation Street on ITV1, so whatever goes against that is pretty much dead in the water."

Chambers, a 37-year-old philosophy graduate, has the avowed mission of positioning Five to appeal to more upmarket viewers. As part of that mission he announced last year that Five would not be commissioning any more reality shows. Instead, the schedules have seen commissions such as Big Ideas That Changed the World, which examined beliefs from Communism to Christianity, and The Creation of Modern Man, a look at the changes in intellectual thought that have driven the evolution of humanity.

Such cerebral fare may be considered a little surprising when you consider that Dawn Airey, the former chief executive of what was then called Channel Five, once famously described the network's success as being built on "football, films and f***ing".

Chambers says that today's Five is a creation very different from its late 1990s incarnation: "I have the greatest respect for Dawn and the principles she launched the channel with - of making as much noise as possible - which made perfect sense.

"But now what we are trying to do is position ourselves as being a more upmarket channel that covers more challenging subjects. It is this challenge of finding things that people are going to watch in large numbers, while not dumbing down to suit tastes of the lowest common denominator."