TV Review: DOMINIC SANDBROOK: LET US ENTERTAIN YOU + JOANNA LUMLEY: ELVIS AND ME

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 7th November 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You: Wednesday, BBC Two

Joanna Lumley: Elvis and Me: Wednesday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Last week, to my delight, I was reminded that The Beatles' return to England following their first US tour was covered live on Grandstand. Such was its import as a major world event, even the BBC's flagship sport show was forced to interrupt its cricket coverage and treat it with due reverence.

Alas, that grainy archive footage was one of the few surprises in episode one of Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You, a new series in which the noted historian examines how, following the post-war decline of Britain's industrial, economic and political influence, it gained a potent new superpower as the world's greatest exporter of popular culture.

The likes of James Bond, Agatha Christie, Doctor Who, The Beatles and Harry Potter have all become symbols of Britain's vaunted position as purveyors of beloved escapist entertainment. Only a madman would reject this inarguable statement of fact, but it wasn't Sandbrook's central thesis I took issue with.

A recurring problem with documentaries of this nature is that anyone interested in watching them will already be quite knowledgeable about the territory they cover. Sure enough, swathes of Sandbrook's narrative felt awfully predictable.

He also has a habit of stating the bleedin' obvious. Quoth our learned guide, “The '60s only swung for a tiny minority.” You don't say? And here was me thinking Dundee city centre was once our shaggy equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.

A stout defender of the British Empire, it's hardly surprising that Sandbrook argued in favour of Victorian values being at the heart of every world-shaking explosion since. He was almost visibly vibrating with pleasure when paying tribute to the “cultural uplift and commercial self-interest” that made Britain great again. It was most unseemly.

Yes, popular culture has always been driven by commerce, but Sandbrook seems to revel in that fact above all else.

It was essentially an extended tribute to post-war commercial entrepreneurs such as J. Arthur Rank, Brian Epstein, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Charles Saatchi, whose marketing nous was a pivotal factor in the electoral success of Margaret Thatcher. They were all drawn from the same cloth, he argued.

That's a rather simplistic view. He's been given four episodes to analyse this subject, you'd expect more nuance.

Describing Britain's vast cultural contribution to the world in purely commercial terms is, of course, anathema to groovy non-bread-heads. This is art, not product. It belongs to us, not The Man. I dare say Sandbrook, who seems like an affable soul with a genuine interest in popular culture, has some sympathy for this dangerously idealistic viewpoint. But that didn't stop him from coming across as the sort of point-missing, number-crunching dullard who values record sales over artistic merit.

For an Elvis fan such as myself, there was an alarming moment near the start of Joanna Lumley: Elvis and Me in which the actress teetered on the verge of regurgitating the tired fallacy that Elvis' post-army career was worthless. Thankfully, it soon became clear that rebellious teen idol '50s Elvis was simply her favourite model, hence why it was the focus of this heartfelt travelogue in which she travelled to Memphis to meet those who knew and loved him.

For once it wasn't simply a case of attaching a famous face to a subject they know little about. Lumley's deep affection for the young, smouldering King was abundantly obvious.

That it was entirely non-critical didn't matter, as it wasn't intended as a sweeping Sandbrook-ian essay on Elvis' cultural significance. Rather, it was a charming tribute to a malleable idol from an eternally smitten fan.