Secret Britain

Spoiler alert: I watched a programme called Secret Britain on BBC TV the other night, mainly because it included a segment on The Inn at the Top, aka the Tan Hill Inn (http://www.tanhillinn.com/). However, the programme was one of the most excruciating “hours of my life I’ll never get back” that I’ve ever experienced. There were all the usual tropes of programme making 21st-century-style: say everything six times, use the same clips over and over, talk down to your audience, never hold any shot or topic for a more than a few seconds in case your low attention span audiences switches channels, convey breathless excitement at even the least exciting things, and, of course, have your presenters “amusingly” try their hands at all sorts of things because just showing us something without a hyper-active presenter in the foreground would be too dull to be true.

There were two presenters, one blonde, one redhead, one male, one female, and they can’t possibly be as dumb as they appeared to be in this program.  Quite apart from the irritating way they…

kept finishing…

each other’s…

sentences…

as if auditioning for the Whicker’s Island sketch on Monty Python, the script was so infantile that it would have embarrassed an eight year-old. As one of my customers in the Dales remarked to me the next day ‘I used to watch Blue Peter when I was young, and they had more respect for the intelligence of their audience than Secret Britain’.

The USP of the programme is that it is showing Secret Britain: things we never knew about our country. To emphasise this, the presenters had clearly been instructed to use the word “secret” every thirty seconds and everything was presented as a secret and a mystery to be solved even when it self-evidently was not.

The absolute nadir was reached when they arrived at the Tan Hill Inn.  The blonde presenter told us that a clue to the secret of Tan Hill was hanging on the wall of the inn. It was a map of the old coal mines that used to surround the inn. After switching to another storyline for a few minutes – see previous comments about the perceived attention span of their audience – the blonde presenter went outside to investigate and – you’re not going to believe this – discovered that there actually used to be coal mines around Tan Hill!!!! Amazing!!!! as both presenters seems to say about everything, evidently not being articulate enough to think of another word. Sorry to spoil the secret for you.

After chewing the cushions, hiding behind the sofa and hurling abuse at the TV for forty minutes, I’d had enough and switched it off and I won’t be going back no matter how many “secrets” they promise to reveal. Lord Reith must be spinning so fast in his grave by now that he’s probably drilled his way down to Australia by now. If you don’t believe how awful Secret Britain is, and you’ve got some spare time you’ve no further use for, here’s the link: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05rcb8l/secret-britain-series-2-2-mysterious-moors-of-yorkshire)