TV Review: Britain in a Day | Twilight of the Porn Stars | Mad Men

By AIDAN SMITH
Published on 17/06/2012 00:00

BRITAIN In A Day was a simple idea. You might say simple and cheap and, with TV budgets being slashed, mildly desperate. But 11,536 YouTube clips still had to be distilled into nothing less than the essence of this land.

Terrific editing would be required, and the music would have to surge at all the key moments. Then there was the great unwashed: could they be relied upon, in the era of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, not to ham it up something horrible but to present a true picture of themselves and their lives? Yes they could. Thus far, this is my programme of the year.

The day – 12 November – was seemingly chosen at random but already had a lot going for it: proximity to Remembrance Sunday, the ongoing Occupy London protest, a football international and the fact the weather was nice for getting out and doing stuff. A man took his cross for a walk (“because Jesus died on one”). A woman stroked the back of a dead bee (“the last of the year, so emotional, we’re burying it”). And a skier climbed into the Cairngorms, rock and gorse all around, searching for just a six feet square patch of snow to maintain her record of having contrived at least one snow-plough turn on the range every month for two years.

Camera phones have democratised film-making. Doubtless they’ve persuaded some to believe they’re Dino De Laurentiis or Cecil B DeMille, but the grandiloquent gesture wouldn’t have worked here, and in any case didn’t get a look-in. Better to point the lens at your daughter as she waggled at a baby tooth in the bathroom mirror. In another mirror, a quiff was teased: “Britain’s oldest teddy boy swings into action.” This was my favourite piece of commentary, until: “Here’s my family’s crest on some rather pretentious chairs – it’s like the Nazi salute.” There were many funny moments but it’s the poignant ones you’ll remember: an estranged dad losing his Skype connection, a mother-and-son reunion in Edinburgh, a dying man who’d overshot his expected demise by two weeks, in floods of tears when the hospital staged his daughter’s wedding.

In his latest documentary Louis Theroux went looking for love and failed to find any. It was strange that he chose California’s San Fernando Valley for this quest because he’s been there before and knows full well it’s the home of the porn industry. Still, he persisted with his line of questioning: does intimacy ever come into it? After watching two “performers” shoot a scene, he remarked: “It’s almost like you just had a relationship moment.” Later he was moved by a couple’s post-porno snuggliness on the sofa: “This is like courtship in reverse. You started with the sex and have ended up something like friends.”

This is an industry which seems to have difficulty with the most basic greetings. The “talent” he’d met for his previous film 15 years before were either too gushy, even by Californian standards, or they addressed him as “Mr Thorax”. Twilight Of The Porn Stars reported a drastic downturn because thanks to the internet we no longer have to rent DVDs, potentially getting into trouble when they appear on declared expenses.

Since 1997, one of the performers had committed suicide. Another had fled porn for IT, which sounded a bit like John Major forsaking life in the circus for the Conservative Party. Some producers are fighting the decline with the kind of things you don’t normally find on a porn set: scenery, costumes and proper dialogue. Thorax viewed some of these high production values, aimed at the “couples market”, but was confused by which period he was supposed to be watching. “It’s period-esque,” explained the producer. “You know how on the cover of historic books there’s always a guy with an open pirate’s shirt? We’re in romanceland.” Romanceland; Thorax liked the sound of that.

The BBC-produced Radio Times has been sniffy about Mad Men since its move to Sky – sour grapes, I reckon. The fifth series just ended was well up to impeccable standard and two episodes – one where every single woman was disappointed with every single man, the other where Roger tried LSD and the special-effects boys made his cigarette trombone – are now among the all-time best. At the very end, with Joan in the boardroom and Peggy nowhere, Don was alone at a bar and seemingly available while Roger was out-Marx-ing Groucho (“Stop being demure – you’re already on the bed”) before standing naked at his window to rage against the dying of the male chauvinist light. But for all those waiting on the boxset, that’s all I’m saying. I haven’t even told you who died.