aderfp633
Inscrit le: 27 Sep 2011
Messages: 7915
Localisation: England
|
 Posté le: Lun Sep 16, 2013 7:38 am Sujet du message: Spencer onwards |
 |
|
{ NextPrevious Blog home Can Robert Peston and Simon Schama reinvigorate the 'man-in-suit' genre?}
Although television has changed rapidly in recent years in both content (the explosion of talent shows) and structure (the arrival of video streaming on demand), one form of TV has remained impressively constant: the historical travelogue, in which an academic or quasi-academic presenter reports from various locations around the world.In the past, this genre was known in commissioning shorthand as man-in-suit and, though gender and wardrobe have slightly widened with the recent admission of Mary Beard and Bettany Hughes, they remain blokey sorts of shows, pioneered by David Attenborough and sustained more recently by Andrew Marr. And, within 24 hours next week, two more are launched: The Story of the Jews (Sunday,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Sale[/url],[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Cheap Toms[/url], 9pm), presented by Simon Schama, and Robert Peston Goes Shopping (Monday,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Outlet[/url], 9pm).Both series are on BBC2 and are examples of the sort of programmes that – beneath the occasional freak breakout hits such as The Great British Bake Off – increasingly represent the network's identity: lectures by highly intelligent experts, illustrated with smart archive or classily filmed sequences and underscored with music.The scope of the programmes is very different, with Peston focusing on the British retail trade since the second world war and Schama dealing with thousands of years of racial history,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Cheap Toms[/url], although with one intriguing coincidental overlap: the shopping documentary emphasises the extent to which innovations in UK retail, from Marks & Spencer onwards, were frequently the work of Jewish immigrants, driven to Britain by the genocidal persecutions to which Schama's series, even in the distant Biblical scholarship of its opening episode, is always ominously and inevitably heading.In terms of production, though, the shows face almost identical decisions, which arise from problems common to this genre. The most important calculation – because this sort of television effectively derives from the academic lecture in the days before PowerPoint presentations – is what the pictures are going to be. What will the DVD box set add to the text of the glossy spin-off hardback?Having the advantage of telling a purely 20th-century story, Robert Peston Goes Shopping makes telling use of library footage (surely there should be a Bafta award for picture research) of the arrival in Britain of various retail landmarks – the supermarket, the discount shop, the Chelsea Girl boutique, the shopping mall – with successive generations of women looking shocked at the range of goods on offer,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Outlet[/url], first in scratchy black-and-white and then grainy early colour.In factual programmes, with time-spans that pre-date photography, the terrible trap is dramatic reconstruction, which has disfigured some of Schama's previous series. So when,[url=http://www.toms-shoes-sale.com]Toms Shoes Sale[/url], in The Story of the Jews, he mentions Moses, the viewer tenses, fearing the appearance, in a robe and large false beard, of an actor distantly familiar as a police officer in season two of Skins.Very sensibly, however, the decision has been taken in this case that distant events are always approached through a filmable, 21st century perspective: Schama explores Hebrew scripture via a service in a west London synagogue and the Dead Sea Scrolls at the contemporary institute dedicated to their elucidation.In this format, the presenter will always drive the bus, but another fundamental judgement is whether passengers should be allowed aboard. Schama, in the tradition established from Kenneth Clark's Civilisation via Attenborough to Marr, carries the narrative almost alone. Peston interviews numerous witnesses, including executives from M&S, Sainsbury's, Dixons and Next, and there are modern vox pops from people who used to work or purchase in the stores in question. Simon Schama in The Story of the Jews. Photograph: BBC/Oxford Film and Television/Tim Kirby The presenter also raises two other questions, which may seem trivial but can have a significant impact on a man-in-suit series. First, what will the host wear? Some 13-part landmark factual series in the past were wrecked by critics simply totting up the changes of shirt and trousers. For this reason, Michael Palin pioneered the use of a uniform outfit in every shot – light chinos, blue shirt – and Peston follows suit(less): wearing the same dark blue coat and pink shirt in sequences filmed far apart.In contrast, Schama follows the Action Man model, with a different outfit for each activity and climate: suits, jeans, long and short-sleeved shirts. This is partly because, while Peston's journey takes him from London to Gateshead, Schama is required to tour the Middle East, although there seems to be a recession-conscious attempt to film as much in the UK as possible, at locations including Sigmund Freud's Hampstead home. In the opening episode, there is only one of the big-budget jump-cuts – with the presenter starting a paragraph in Israel and ending it in Egypt – that were standard in such programmes in days of higher licence-fee settlements and air-miles accounts.The second host-related poser involves the hands. Terrified of the viewer dosing off or switching over in the sections where the theses are laid out, producers encourage factual presenters to be active and emphatic. Is some sequences, Marr looked as if he was bringing a plane in to land at Heathrow. Peston, addressing us from the aisle of a supermarket, seems at one point to be juggling invisible skittles, and Schama, telling the story of Josephus, throws both arms above his head, like a cricket umpire signalling a six.It is the presenters' heads, though, that really matter. Both series, in magnificent resistance to the general Cowellisation of television, are impressively brainy: Peston manages to make the dropping of Retail Price Maintenance fascinating, while Schama compellingly lays out the long division in Judaism between orthodoxy and personal interpretation.In both shows, viewers know that we are heading towards politically controversial territory – the financial crash, Israel's relationship with the Palestinians – and it will be intriguing to see how, after such bright beginnings, the series deal with that material.
_________________
People watching the forthcoming beginning of the German half of the inhabitants of Berlin are no interested in co-optation |
|
