Weekend TV review: Keep Leo on ice, he's just a distraction

Published on Sunday 25 May 2008 19:39

The 11th Hour, Channel 4 The Vicar of Baghdad, STV

OH, LOOK, it's Leonardo di Caprio! And I think he's standing in front of the place where Danny Zuko had the drag race in Grease.

He looks very sincere, does Leo, and he's saying something too… something about, um, the Earth or something. He's concerned that the icebergs are melting – which is ironic, because he was in Titanic, but he obviously doesn't hold a grudge! It's funny how he never looks any older, though, isn't it?

And thus, this is why we're screwing up the actual planet we live on. We don't mean to, we know we shouldn't, but we get distracted by celebrities and trivia and kind of absent-mindedly gloss over how we're choking ourselves to extinction. The 11th Hour, di Caprio's own version of Al Gore's film, did not really contain any startling new information that we haven't seen before a hundred times.

Everyone – even George Bush these days – knows our massive consumption isn't sustainable and that reusing supermarket bags is only going to make a dent in the problem. Yet since we don't seem to be really taking it in, there's no point complaining that it's old news.

There were a lot of talking heads in this documentary, patiently explaining yet again that the temperatures are rising, the population is soaring – when JFK was president, one pointed out, there were only half as many people alive as there are now, which is a stunning statistic – and we could be going the way of the dinosaurs. It was, to be honest, a little hard to focus on, as facts and figures, diagrams and details piled up.

Easier to watch the parts with Leo in front of various nice locations or the gorgeous cinematography of oceans and rainforests. "Why aren't we responding?" he asked. "What are the forces that are blocking change?"

Well, perhaps the fact that we just don't want to have to think about it, and we'd rather distract ourselves with shiny nonsense. It's not the fault of Di Caprio, who seems like a decent sort and has clearly made an effort to do something useful with his fame. But the fact that we need a celebrity to tell us something so fundamental is why we're probably doomed.

A psychologist, James Hillman, also made an interesting point in the film: "We numb our senses from morning to night, whether with noise or loud music or light at night … we rush around permanently needy, but we don't know what we've lost, the beauty of the world."

That could have been a sermon from Canon Andrew White, the Anglican Church's man in Iraq, known as The Vicar Of Baghdad. Rageh Omaar's profile let the loquacious minister tell his extraordinary story.

While he "does God" at the weekends, during the week Canon White walks a tricky path trying to keep in with the Americans, the mullahs, the government and other factions, without being too identified with any side. "I've been hijacked, kidnapped, locked up in rooms with cut-off bits of finger and toe and things, I've been held at gunpoint, been attacked – the usual things," he shrugged.

He emerged as a jolly, ambitious figure who, despite the dangers, seemed to thrive on his immensely difficult job. But I don't think that Omaar was really able to get below the surface of the man, not helped by his family being off-limits for security reasons.

Asked how he could work with the occupiers of Iraq, White's reply, basically, was how could he not? Omaar did not look convinced, but admired him anyway for representing "innocent optimism in a cynical city".