Tag Archives: TV

What I think, What I've Been Doing

The Climate Crisis Will Be Televised Trivially

A screenshot of me sitting in church on local news on the evening of 8th March 2023. Caption reads “Lloyd Davis, Community Worker, Guildford United Reformed Church”

We got a call just after 10:30am on Wednesday from ITN saying that they had a film crew in Guildford reporting on the overnight snow and wondering whether they could come and film at our Warm Hub.

In the late summer, you know when we had a change of monarch and several prime ministers and for all the reasons it was becoming clear that fuel prices were about to go up very quickly and probably stay there, we decided to open our doors every weekday morning during the winter (very loosely November to March) for anyone who might need warmth either physical or metaphorical. Lots of people were talking about it at the time and that got crystallised into the #WarmWelcome movement and Surrey County Council put some funding towards supporting “Warm Hubs”. We didn’t care much about the branding, though it was nice to have the funding. As it’s turned out, for many reasons, most of which we can only speculate about, few people came for help (here and in other hubs around the county) but those who have done have really appreciated it.

Anyway, that’s not today’s story, that’s just something you need to know because I’ve been naughty and not writing here as much as I should have. If I were the natural-born blogger that sometimes people say I am, you’d be sick of hearing about this by now.

So I said yes of course (just say yes!) but couldn’t guarantee whether anyone would still be there when the crew turned up. There were a few people in the foyer and we were doing our dementia-friendly Sunflower Café in the sanctuary. They did come quite soon afterwards (two women carrying all the kind of kit that you’d expect for proper grown-up TV, not like those social media amateurs you get these days!) and we chatted and gave them tea and then I did a little interview and the camera operator got some B-roll and then they also interviewed some of the people at the café about how they were dealing with the cold weather. Everyone was very polite, as Guildford people are, and answered the questions without revealing what’s really going on.

Because really, who wants to go on TV and say “oh it’s miserable, I’m having a terrible time, can’t afford to keep warm, can’t afford to eat, and my life-partner, who I’ve loved to bits for fifty years, has dementia and needs constant attention… but it’s great that I can come here and have a free cup of tea and some biscuits and maybe some advice on how to save energy.”

It was easier for me because a) I’m not in the same predicament; b) I have a job title to hide behind; c) I’ve always got lots to say when asked; d) we had a similar media request before Christmas and I prepped some talking points then.

All the same I did end up rambling a bit about how “isolation” means something different for rich people in Surrey versus poor people in inner cities, but the bit that made it to broadcast was me saying “It’s just been grey and it’s felt like the sun’s not gonna come back and that just has a massive effect on everybody’s mental health, both in terms of feeling a bit down but also just feeling tired.”

My mug, used as an illustration for the “hot tea” served at church.
It has the slogan “Keep Calm And Play The Ukulele”

After another cup of tea and stocking up on custard creams, they left us to visit the gritting depot.

I was left feeling really sorry for them, dashing around town in the cold, trying to tell a story out of all of this, for an early evening TV audience who probably get up after the main news to put the kettle on. And what’s the story? It snowed and it was cold but people, being people, just got on with their days – those that can, had fun; those that have jobs to do, did their jobs. My suspicion/prejudice is that the demographic that watches ITV local news mostly couldn’t have fun in the snow and probably don’t have jobs.

This link might break soon, I don’t know how long they keep this sort of thing up for, but looking at the resulting 2m18s of film made me think of the mirror-image, the news items we get in the summer, the ones that go “oh blimey, isn’t it hot?!” and show a bunch of pink English people in the park and someone trying to deal with molten tarmac before cutting to a warning to be careful near water. At what point do we stop doing this? I mean, stop treating these weirder weather patterns as comic/tragic filler between the “real” news and the early evening soaps. No it’s not unheard of for us to have snow in early March, but what I said about it feeling that the sun isn’t coming back is unusual and it comes on the back of earlier winter months when it felt like it was never going to stop raining and then the summer last year when it felt like it was never going to rain again. That’s the description of climate change that feels closest to my direct experience.

It leaves me thinking about what media we *could* be making about what’s really going on, so I guess that’s why I seem to be blogging again.

words

I’ve started watching “House of Cards” on Netflix #houseofcards

I had a long period of TV abstinence beginning in about 2004 (I guess it was about when I started writing here – something had to go to make time for it).  But Netflix has drawn me back into fairly regular TV watching because it’s totally under my control and it makes a decent fist most of the time of alerting me to things I’d like to see.

Lots has been written about the new House of Cards which is not being shown on regular TV.  It’s on Netflix-only, and the 13 episodes were released all in one go last week.  Mostly though people are focusing their attention on the novelty of the release rather than the programme itself.

Which is a shame, because it’s very good.  I haven’t gone full throttle into TV addiction yet so I haven’t succumbed to the temptation of just watching the whole thing in a 13-hour marathon, but I’ve managed the first three episodes and we’re getting used to the characters and seeing some of the storylines start to firm up.

I was initially disappointed to realise (it came in the first few shots when Kevin Spacey turned and started talking to camera) that it’s the Michael Dobbs/Andrew Davies House of Cards remade in today’s US political scene.  Disappointed only because the original was *so* good, so captivating, so of the time and shockingly near to what we suspected the inside of party politics was like, long before The Thick of It.  And because Ian Richardson was so compelling: simultaneously adorable and despicable.  And because I’m rarely won over by American remakes of British TV.  Where I am at the end of episode 3, Spacey hasn’t quite reached Richard III levels of despicability but he’s getting there and I fully believe that he pulls it off by Episode 13 and Robin Wright is an able Lady Macbeth.   Part of the draw for me is seeing how the other recognisable characters might turn out – although it’s pretty much a question of how they will meet their various sticky ends rather that whether they do (I hope).

I like the graphic overlays that denote when people are texting each other.  It lets the acting continue without cutting away to a close-up of the phone screen.  I haven’t seen it done as authentically before.

It’s very interesting to see it transplanted into American politics and the DC village rather than the Westminster one.  Though I am wondering why it took 23 years for this story to be acceptable to a US audience.  Is American politics in a similar place now to where we were at the end of the Thatcher era?  I guess there are similar levels of disillusionment with the system, but has that come about recently? Is it a new thing?  If we got any faith in the system back in 1997 we’ve lost it again since.

One thing that does crop up with the all-in-one release thing is that it makes it hard to have an online social experience around it and so it’s hard to write about without some spoilers – it’s neither like a movie (which you’ve either seen or you haven’t) nor like a standard TV series (where you might allow people to be a few episodes behind, but pretty much you expect everyone to be up to date or avoiding any reviews).  And of course it’s also a remake.

But do I hate spoilers so I shall wait until a significantly larger number of my friends are admitting to having seen it.