ITALY'S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR'S DIARY + THE LUMINARIES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th June 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

ITALY’S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR’S DIARY

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

This stark documentary was filmed inside an overstretched hospital at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. It follows A&E doctor Francesca Mangiatordi as she struggles to care for an escalating influx of infected patients. A shortage of beds has left staff with no choice but to park patients in corridors, sometimes for days. Mangiatordi is exhausted, candid and eloquent. She repeatedly questions the worth of her role in the face of such overwhelming suffering: “When you remove someone’s dignity, you leave them with nothing.” Gradually, some of her colleagues succumb to the virus. Their experience of treating Covid patients naturally makes them more fearful about their own chances of survival. Meanwhile, Mangiatordi frets about the prospect of a devastating second wave.

THE HIDDEN WILD OF THE MOTORWAY

Tuesday, BBC Four, 9pm

Britain’s busiest road, the M25, is a vast loop of soulless concrete. But look closer and you’ll find that the natural world has adapted to coexist around it. Inspired by J.G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad, naturalist Helen Macdonald takes a thoughtful stroll around the M25’s perimeter in this hauntological documentary. She discovers pretty woodlands and waterways scored to a background roar of traffic; some songbirds have had to alter the pitch of their calls in order to be heard. She also reveals how fungi studies could help to solve the problem of traffic congestion. An enthusiastic, softly-spoken scholar finding hidden wonders in mundane areas we take for granted, this is a quintessential BBC Four joint. We’ll miss it when it’s gone.

THE SECRET MEDITERRANEAN WITH TREVOR McDONALD

Tuesday, STV, 9pm

You could argue that sunny foreign TV travelogues are the last thing we need to see at the moment. They’re a cruel reminder of an increasingly distant time when, finances permitting, we could hop on a plane and relax our blues away on holiday. On the other hand, the sight of genial Sir Trev in sunglasses and an open-necked shirt might provide a fleeting distraction from the misery of life as we currently know it. Which sounds fine in theory, but according to the synopsis – preview copies weren’t available – episode one involves Trev boarding a superyacht once owned by Aristotle Onassis and later witnessing a bout of camel wrestling. That doesn’t sound like fun to me. Tastes may vary.

HUEY MORGAN’S LATIN AMERICAN ADVENTURE

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

In this vibrant new series, the BBC 6 Music DJ drops his usual tiresome wise-guy act to engage sincerely with the turbulent history of Latin American popular music. His perspiring odyssey begins in Brazil, where ecstatic Samba rhythms continue to represent the defiant voice of oppressed working-class people (Brazil is currently governed by ‘the Trump of the Tropics’). This is protest music in its purest most transcendent form; grooving community action. He also covers the bossa nova boom and examines the anti-capitalist politics of the tropicalia movement via interviews with the great Gilberto Gil and, from the magnificently far-out Os Mutantes, Arnaldo Baptista. These musicians challenged the jackboot status quo with some the greatest music ever made.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE LUMINARIES

Sunday 21st and Monday 22^nd June, BBC One

This turgid adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel (which I’ve never read and never will) succeeds only as a showcase for some decent production design. It looks good, but the story, the characters, don’t engage at all. It’s set on New Zealand’s South Island in 1866. Various folk converge to pan for gold. It glistens with a hallucinatory sheen of opiated sweat and grime. The performances are fine and the setting is potentially interesting. There’s something to be said here about colonialism, racism, misogyny and greed. The Luminaries somehow manages to crush that potential into mulch with its awkward pacing and structure. An alienating mess.

THE CHOIR: SINGING FOR BRITAIN

Tuesday 23^rd June, BBC Two

Gareth Malone is a smarmy little creep, a tweedy child with an orchard full of apples for teacher. Hats off to every frontline worker involved in this experiment, you’re all brilliant, lovely people, but keep a close eye on Malone. He’s a government-sanctioned Minister of Music in waiting who can barely disguise his contempt for pop music behind that faux-groovy piano teacher facade. He makes Gary Barlow look like Che Guevara.

TV Review: BLACK NURSES: THE WOMEN WHO SAVED THE NHS + LIFE & DEATH THE PENTECOSTAL WAY

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 26 November 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

BLACK NURSES: THE WOMEN WHO SAVED THE NHS

Thursday, BBC Four

LIFE AND DEATH THE PENTECOSTAL WAY

Sunday, BBC Two

  

When the great Aneurin Bevan created the NHS in 1948, it soon became apparent that his heroic endeavour required urgent assistance from beyond these shores.

There simply weren’t enough doctors, nurses and midwifes in Britain to support it, so thousands of Caribbean women were shipped over to assist the “Mother Country”. 

Their story was told in BLACK NURSES: THE WOMEN WHO SAVED THE NHS, another revealing entry in the BBC’s excellent Black and British season.

This primarily mournful documentary illustrated how, despite playing a vital role in creating and sustaining the NHS for 70 years, they’ve rarely received the respect they deserve.

It starred a group of eloquent older ladies sharing vivid memories of their nursing careers, many of them tainted by anger and sadness. While they remain understandably proud of their achievements, the racism they experienced painted a dispiriting portrait of Britain then and now.

They recounted tales of white patients who refused to be treated by black nurses. One woman recalled being attacked in the street by a group of men. This was the thanks they received for serving our great nation?

The prejudice was horrendous. Angering archive footage revealed white ‘50s Britons decrying black immigrants as dirty, whereas in reality these young women were scrupulously hygienic. Indeed, they were shocked by the grubby state of Britain when they first arrived.

As far-right groups exploited rising tensions – images of ‘Keep Britain White’ graffiti mirrored recent reports from America of daubed hate speech in the wake of Trump’s triumph – most black women, regardless of ability, were unfairly funnelled into the junior nursing category. Their chances of promotion were almost non-existent.

To this day, black people represent only a tiny percentage of NHS senior management position. Several nurses spoke of becoming demotivated after being repeatedly passed over when applying for promotion.

Only in the field of midwifery did they gradually flourish, as midwives tend to be regarded as more important than nurses. Not true, of course, but that’s the prevailing view.

The programme was bookended by the observation that the midwife who helped to deliver ‘Prince’ George and ‘Princess’ Charlotte is black. That’s an achievement of sorts, I suppose, although I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps it wasn’t the best way of illustrating a semi-optimistic kernel of progress.

The Black and British season continued with the observational documentary, LIFE AND DEATH THE PENTECOSTAL WAY.

Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing Christian faith in Britain, with Black Majority Pentecostal churches proving particularly successful.

The programme spent time with the curators and parishioners of the Brixton New Testament Church of God, which was established by Windrush West Indians in the 1950s.

Religion gets short shrift in our increasingly secular society, often for good reason, but this was a convincingly positive portrayal of a church that embodies truly altruistic Christian values.

It plays a vital role in a community troubled by poverty, crime and police harassment. If Jesus Himself ran a charitable inner-city drop-in centre for vulnerable people, it would probably look something like this.

Even the way the church is funded, by locals donating however much they want, seemed sound.

Regardless of your beliefs, there’s no denying the admirable endeavours of these genuinely kind, tolerant children of God. I was particularly impressed by a rousing sermon from the charismatic Bishop Brown, as he urged his flock to treat all people equally.

It was a reminder that you’ve got to have faith, at least in human nature.