This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Twenty-five years ago, I was on a boating holiday off the coast of Turkey. The captain spoke barely five words of English, a barrier swiftly overcome when he discovered who I worked for: now that was something he could understand. For the following week, he summoned me to meals on deck with a three-letter bellow: “Bee-Bee-Ceeee!”
Times they have a-changed, at least for Brits, who no longer seem to share our overseas cousins’ fondness for our century-old national broadcaster – if we believe what we’re always being told.
With charter renewal only 18 months away, newspaper headlines bark about its irrelevance, wokeness and badly behaved stars – which makes you wonder, if chief antagonists Murdoch and the Daily Mail got their way and brought down the BBC, how on earth would they then fill their pages?
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the battlefield, there is the unstoppable rise of the streamers.
In the past, Adolescence would have been a Channel 4 drama, instead it’s a multiple award-winner for Netflix. Previously, writer Neil Forsyth would surely have followed his BBC One hit The Gold with the equally glorious Legends on the same channel, but instead it too ended up on Netflix. The hedonists of Rivals would have found a natural home on ITV1 rather than Disney+, while Clarkson’s Farm would have slotted seamlessly into the BBC Two schedule where Top Gear for so long reigned supreme.
Does any of that matter? I’ve quoted before Lord Puttnam’s impassioned plea for the protection of public service broadcasting and all that comes with it: “We all like our puddings, but we need our greens.”
But this list of notable absences shows just how instrumental the BBC has been in creating all those plump puddings.
The very reason such current streaming-platform shows enjoy a quality to match the glories of linear TV past is that their makers were directly influenced by those same glories. The older ones learnt at the knee of seminal creatives like Dennis Potter and Mike Leigh, while younger ones grew up with Our Friends in the North.
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When a producer friend once pitched some documentary ideas to Sky Arts, he was told, “The tone and feel we’re after for this channel is BBC Two circa 1980.” Everyone in the room knew immediately what that meant.
I once asked Adam Price, creator of Nordic noir behemoth Borgen, what TV had inspired him. His reply? “Nothing Danish. All your great British stuff.”
Back home, we have a whole generation of TV-makers who still get misty-eyed at the ambition of Edge of Darkness and remember the power of the single-act drama, from Cathy Come Home to Abigail’s Party.
The BBC’s long-established greenhouse of talent, when paired with the streamers’ big budgets, means we now inhabit a cultural sweet spot, where programme-makers share our tastes, sensibilities and a common cultural heritage that, sadly, future generations won’t enjoy.
Read more:
Is it your BBC? Radio Times readers reveal their thoughts on the public broadcaster - and why most call for its survivalI used to be BBC One controller and these are 10 things the BBC must now do to surviveOf course, the BBC isn’t perfect. Everything from salacious stars to expenses excess puts it with every other creaky UK institution desperately requiring reform from within.
But away from the countries who have copied our model – from Australia to Canada via South Africa – we have, to our left, state-controlled propaganda rather than programming, while to our right in the US, the ad-filled Wild West cries out for regulation. Geographically and politically, we’re in another sweet spot.
To borrow from Winston Churchill, the BBC may be the worst form of state broadcaster, except for all those others that have been tried. After 100 years, it still aspires to be the best of us, and if we take it for granted, we’re fools.
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