Jayne Dowle: A programme to watch from the new BBC boss

So Lord Patten is the new chairman of the BBC Trust. It’s not something you think about, is it? Who runs the BBC. Can you even name his predecessor, Sir Michael Lyons? But the appointment of Lord Patten of Barnes, former chairman of the Conservative party, former governor of Hong Kong and Chancellor of the University of Oxford, will affect us all.

No matter how many hundreds of television channels we subscribe to, we will still have the BBC. And, until such a time that the system receives the overhaul it is threatened with, we will still have to pay our licence fee to the BBC. And, undoubtedly, as the latest dud – I’m thinking of the pointless sci-fi “drama” Outcasts – hits our screens, question exactly what our money is being spent on. So, in our multi-channel, multi-media age, there is a big argument about what Lord Patten’s BBC should do for us. Especially when you consider how this arch-traditionalist might go about reconciling that with those Reithian values – to inform, educate and entertain – on which the BBC was founded, and to which he no doubt subscribes.

My husband and I measure out our lives in BBC broadcasts: Radio 4’s The Today Programme, PM, the BBC News at six, then the 10 o’clock news and Newsnight. Gosh, we sound almost as reactionary as Lord Patten himself, who told the Commons Select Committee approving his appointment that he gets up to Radio 4, goes to bed to Radio 4 and has only ever heard Radio 1, “when trying to get Radio 3 or 4”.

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Mmm. Similarities between ourselves and a Tory peer are entirely coincidental, but it’s a good job we’ve got more than one television, because otherwise the kids would leave home. They spend their weekends squabbling over live football vs iCarly (a squeaky American import about teenage girls running a web-show). Only the other day, we were reminsicencing about the simple days of toddlerhood, when CBeebies ruled the airwaves.

So I am well-aware that for many people, including my own children, the BBC no longer plays the pivotal role it did. When you can flick between Big Fat Wrestler Weddings, synchronised bobsledding and Danish sex-docs on any number of international channels, why should any of us really care what dear old Auntie Beeb does?

Well, we should care, because first of all it’s our money. And we should care, as the new chairman has it is in his power to ultimately decide what we watch, and listen to; let’s not forget the network of local radio the BBC presides over. And we should care, because when the BBC does it right, it does it brilliantly. Nature and history documentaries. Excellent political coverage and debate. However, the BBC cannot be complacent. It has, for instance, long held the prize for turning period dramatisations into an art-form. I am not alone in listing the impossibly undemanding Lark Rise to Candleford as a guilty pleasure. But the recent success of ITV1’s Downton Abbey has challenged the Beeb’s crown as queen of the bonnet drama.

Obviously, he is going to be busy, steering the Corporation through the digital switch-over, protecting its interests in the global marketplace and tackling the mighty Murdoch megalith. But if Lord Patten wants to impress, one thing he must do straightaway is encourage quality. From his lofty perch, he should be good at this, so rather than rely on old chestnuts, get managers to commission talented writers to come up with new period dramas. In short, clone Julian Fellowes.

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But what of contemporary drama? Comedy? Entertainment? On the evidence to the Select Committee, it’s not boding well. When Lord Patten was asked when he had last watched an episode of EastEnders, he replied: “Even longer ago than I had a McDonald’s.” Well, personally, I’m with him on that one. But it’s a bit of a worry when the boss of the firm doesn’t sample the goods in the shop. I’m sure that all those quiet hours listening to Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time have done his intellect a power of good, but they’re not going to cut much ice with a nation of couch potatoes.

That question was a bit of a bear-trap though. Better to have asked if he had ever seen the political satire The Thick Of It or the thoroughly-modern sitcom Outnumbered, both excellent examples of the kind of stuff we want more of. I can’t help but wonder what the future holds, especially when he is going to find himself handling such loose cannons as the boss of BBC One, Danny Cohen, who complains that BBC sitcoms are too middle-class and need to channel blue-collar heroes like Del Boy. It’s going to be an interesting appointment, for sure.

I might be imagining it, but I am sure I recall an old episode of that truly quality BBC creation, Yes Minister, in which Sir Humphrey and the minister were discussing what to do with a hapless politician. “Does he have a television set?” Sir Humphrey asks. “No, he never watches television,” the minister replies. “Excellent,” says Sir Humphrey. “Make him the chairman of the BBC.”

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