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ANALYSIS
Business
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January 7, 2006
HOW MUCH WORK do 'dog wranglers' get on television? I can't say I noticed the credit at the end of the first of a two-part celebration of Jerome K Jerome's historic comic novel Three Men in a Boat.
But, at the end of part two, while paying special attention to try to note who'd been responsible for the beautiful camerawork - Messrs Barrow and Keeping, for the record - the canine credit added a final smile to the programmes' charm.
Re-enacting Jerome's week-long trip in a wooden skiff with Harris and George was ripe for television, as it's hard to destroy already picturesque landscapes and riverscapes.
There is something very English about Three Men in the Boat, but Welshman Griff Rhys Jones and Irish comedian Dara O'Briain seem to have assimilated enough to appreciate the idiosyncracies of the Rivers Thames and Isis between Kingston and Oxford.
All producers know that casting makes or breaks any show, so putting the abstemious Mr Rhys Jones into the company of Rory McGrath, a man who clearly appreciates a good beer, worked nicely.
The trio did remain true to the BBC press released dated September 14 last year, which said filming would take place along the river between September 5 and 13. (Hindsight is so helpful when predicting the future.)
The crew, from independent producers Liberty Bell, did not fulfill another Corporation promise: 'The original characters travelled with a motley selection of food supplies and just two changes of linen, intending to bathe and wash their clothes in the river,' the release went on.
'There promises,' it continued, 'to be an unprecedented show of flesh from the three comic actors.'
Not wishing to be too cruel, none of the three has a reputation as an Adonis-like sex symbol. Was such a statement a wise enticement for the programme? Somehow, I don't think so.
The sight of Griff Rhys Jones jumping into the Thames for a swim (in shorts, I hasten to add), while his compatriots were - if I remember correctly - trapped in a nearby pub, was not the most erotic television of the year so far.
Editing out any further exposure of the stout figures of Messrs McGrath and O'Briain was probably wise.
With excursions to re-visit floating recording studios, churches, other pubs, the site of the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, talk to swan-rescuers and crayfish hunters, Three Men in a Boat was a deliciously understated travelogue.
Director Michael Massey certainly put his back into the production; well, a shot of his back anyway, as he tried to show one of the trio how to erect a tent.
With a generally warm welcome, but probably not in the same league as the original, it's possible to imagine the BBC commissioning a Liberty Bell proposal for a follow-up.
While the 1889 novel was a best-seller, Jerome's sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, was nowhere near as successful.
So, if there is a decision to visit Germany, then let's hope that a second 21st century re-enactment has better fortune than the story on which it would be based.
SEX IS OK on television is ok if you pay for it. Well, that seems to be the approach in the US. You can pay for greater explicitness on cable or satellite, but if you're too poor, you have to be repressed by the censorship of analogue terrestrial channels.
Sex in The City escaped the worst censure because it was produced and originally transmitted by the pay-channel HBO. When it was syndicated elsewhere, uptight censorious right-wingers had to be satiated by extensive cutting.
So, it's not surprising that even young, streetwise Americans are initially shocked when they're confronted by sexual explicitness on television.
Even if the words didn't come out of their mouths, the eyes of the young men and women confronted by BBC filmmaker Christopher Sylvester when he told them he was shooting vox pops about circumcision screamed 'what!'.
Even acknowledging that the documentary was made for BBC3, Sylvester made a determined effort to challenge societal prejudices; the credits noted, in parenthesis, the condition of every male involved in the production.
Sylvester does have to be admired for persuading the Corporation to fund a trip round the USA to talk about sex; not bad if you've got the chutzpah.
Despite nearly 60-minutes' airtime, Sylvester seemed unable to find a strong single reason for the difference in circumcision rates in the US - 90 per cent or more in some States - and the UK, where the barbaric surgery is becoming increasingly rare.
The answer was, a lot of the time, staring him in the lens: American uptightness when it comes to talking about the human body and sex.
Just about all of the problems which some medics claim can be prevented by circumcision can also be avoided if males keep their willies clean.
So, the problem isn't genital cleanliness in itself, but - inter-generational - communication.
Why would an American dad want his son to be 'just like him'? Not because of the look; as Sylvester pointed out, even if Junior becomes a naturist, he's unlikely to be asked too many questions about why he's not cut, but because Dad is too uptight to talk to his toddler son about pulling back a foreskin to keep it clean and healthy.
Two thousand years ago, in the hot and sweaty deserts of the Middle East, there wasn't much clean water that men could stick their dicks into.
That has changed, so, as Sylvester graphically argued, there's no real justification for strapping down baby boys and torturing their most sensitive 'bits'.
If MTV in the US wants to do something really constructive for the 'personal and social education' of the nation's young, they could far worse than run this documentary - regularly.
PERHAPS THE MOST infuriating American television custom has, at last, arrived in the UK.
For decades, UK viewers have been spared the irritating US habit of taking a first commercial break after a programme's main titles sequence but before 'guest' appearances are credited.
But, for all its claims to be 'adult entertainment', that's exactly what More 4 did in this week's episode of the West Wing.
US viewers may not flinch when this happens, because it's been going on for so long, but here in the UK, it's as frustrating as seeing credits overlaid like subtitles across the dialogue and action of the next few minutes and as aggravating as realizing that the titles are still running 15 minutes into a movie.
Being distracted, just as you're settling into a good drama, breaks your concentration on the plot, the dialogue and the characters. Break too early and you break the mood.
More 4 seems keen to make that first ad break a long one anyway, probably because the West Wing is produced as a standard US television hour, in other words about 45 minutes of screen time.
Whatever the reason, taking such long breaks so early in a show is irksome, in the UK or the US, and a serious temptation to zap away from the commercials.
If advertisers want audiences, then this TV custom probably isn't doing them any favours in the UK and they'd be well advised to encourage the broadcasters to desist.
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Adam Christie is editor of AsPerceived. The views expressed here are personal.
E-mail media_week@asperceived.com with any comments, please.
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