TV Review: On The Box

Published on Friday 7 November 2008 17:51

THE PRINCE CHARLES GENERATION

Channel 4 Thursday, 9pm

AUTUMNWATCH

BBC2 Monday and Tuesday, 8pm

THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Various channels Tuesday, 11pm

THE INBETWEENERS

Channel 4 Wednesday, 11:05pm

ON THE 14th of November 1948, the masses celebrated the birth of Prince Charles by sending a deluge of gifts to Buckingham Palace, a move which demonstrated both an enormous generosity of spirit and, it must be said, a staggering inability to grasp the defining perk of royalty. Admittedly, it's not a hard and fast rule but, generally speaking, when a family's foremost member appears in side profile on the nation's coinage, their kinsfolk can usually afford their own teething rings.

The Palace, to its credit, responded to this bounty of blankets and baubles with a magnanimous gesture. Acting like a benign Anti-Herod, they packed these gifts into hampers and distributed them among the families of the thousand or so other Britons born that day. Channel 4's beguiling documentary The Prince Charles Generation profiled some of the beneficiaries of that largess as they enter their 60th year.

But though the subjects of the programme shared the Prince's date of birth, their lives had, to the surprise of no one, followed radically different trajectories. Most worked hard and married young. Some prospered, others did not. And, as revealed via the obligatory run of faded snapshots, all endured regrettable haircuts during their youth.

Yet, despite the best efforts of a narrator who kept drawing ever more tenuous links, the show's efforts to contrast the Prince with this disparate group came to nowt. Not that it mattered really. Even without the royal peg, there was something oddly compelling about their tales, particularly the matter-of-fact personal history related by Sandy Lamb, an actuary from Perth, whose reserved manner, quiet dignity and melodious cadence suggested a loveable supporting character from an early Bill Forsyth movie.

Though the programme approached its subjects with a commendable mixture of insight and empathy, it did aim a few snarky barbs at the Prince. In a cruel opening salvo liable to keep the programme's producers off any future honours list, the narrator drolly described the Prince as "a middle-aged divorcee living with his second wife in a house belonging to his mother".

Meanwhile, over on BBC2, another noteworthy sexagenarian, the esteemed Bill Oddie, was reducing his Autumnwatch co-host Kate Humble to giggly hysterics with his observations about the eternal conflict between red and grey squirrels. Testing the problem-solving abilities of Dorset's squirrel population, the hirsute ex-Goodie was delighted to witness a bold new tactic being deployed by the bushy-tailed reds.

In theory they were supposed to negotiate a complex series of clothes lines and "squirrel baffles" in order to retrieve a treasure trove of nuts. Instead, the resourceful rodents, slyly noting the not-very-well-hidden TV cameras, were clambering over tripod stands, blocking our field of vision with their fluffy appendages and leaping on top of state-of-the-art broadcasting gear in a daring bid to reach this prize. Oddie, a man who seems to grow ever more eccentric the further he strays from his ornithological comfort zone, exploded with glee. "Better red than dead!" he punned as Humble smiled sympathetically.

In retrospect I suppose this daring rodent heist might also serve as a metaphor for Oddie's unpredictable journey from anarchic comic icon to dangerously unorthodox wildlife presenter. Short of Harry Hill remaking Life On Earth, it's hard to imagine a more joyously unhinged natural history anchor. But even without Oddie's increasingly demented shtick, Autumnwatch would still be appointment television. Tune into any other BBC wildlife show, and you'll invariably be whisked off to some impossibly exotic locale where a suitably awed grown-up will wax reverently about tiger cubs, meerkats or whatever the beastie du jour is. But Autumnwatch and its seasonal sister shows offer us something far more valuable; a chance to marvel at the myriad natural wonders lurking just beyond our back doors. And really, why should childish merriment be any less valid a response to nature's splendour?

Juvenile silliness of a calculating and slightly more mean-spirited variety dominated 4's yoof-orientated sitcom The Inbetweeners, finally transferring to the mother channel after a successful try-out over on E4. The premise, heavily influenced by both Peep Show and the sublime Judd Apatow teen comedy Superbad, has an impossibly posh public school sixth-former with a high IQ but no social skills to speak of, transferring to a rough comprehensive. Hilarity, or at least a reasonable facsimile, ensues. On one level it's a fairly cynical venture, borrowing heavily from obvious sources and tailing the zeitgeist from an overly cautious distance. Yet, despite its derivative nature, it's partially redeemed by leading actor Simon Bird, who perfectly captures that strange mix of insouciance, over-confidence and abject terror which tends to define adolescence.

The week's most compelling small screen moments, however, were buried in the early hours of Wednesday morning as the news channels offered competing coverage of the US presidential race's final lap. Disappointingly, the Beeb's contributions to the night proved ramshackle and directionless. One News 24 correspondent, for reasons which pass all human understanding, interviewed noted political analyst Ricky Gervais, asking him who he thought David Brent, still a fictional character and a non-US citizen last time I checked, might vote for. ITV, meanwhile, marred an otherwise excellent night of reporting by accidentally giving all of Obama's votes to McCain during the early hours of the count.

Appropriately, however, it was the American News networks which offered the most entertainment. Over on Fox News there was weeping and the gnashing of eerily luminescent teeth as the partisan cheerleaders of neo-conservatism surrendered to the march of history and their opponents. CNN, on the other hand, used this portentous moment to showcase some jaw-dropping visual trickery with in-the-field commentators, like the magnificently named Jessica Yellin, supposedly appearing live in the studio via holographic projection. Pondering both this hi-tech gee-whizzness and the extraordinary promise of Obama's victory, it finally seemed safe to assume that the 21st century had arrived.