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The Best TV in the WorldDateline: 24th March, 2002Britain has, we are told, the best television in the world. If that's true, God help the rest! The announcement this week of the TV BAFTA nominations set me thinking about the television that I watch - or rather, that I don't watch. There's only two programmes I watch on a regular basis, and they're both American imports. Whatever happened to the one-off play? Where are the glory days of Cathy Come Home or Edna the Inebriate Woman? Why is it that just one series - Perfect Strangers - stands out head and shoulders above anything since Poliakoff's last series? Why is it that I can remember Warriors far more clearly than something I watched yesterday? The schedules seem to be full of tired old programmes staggering along when they should have been pensioned off. The Bill used to be superb: now it's predictable and dull. Casualty is another that's well past its sell-by date. Once programmes like these start concentrating on the personal lives of the characters, you know they're running out of steam - you're entering soap country. Please understand, I'm not talking about production values here - the days of sets which look as though they are about to collapse went out with Crossroads the first time round - but about content, about experiment, about pushing back the boundaries of the genre, about intellectual rigour and emotional truthfulness. There never was a golden age of television, when every programme was brilliant, every comedy hilarious, every play incisive and demanding. There has always been the dross - the potboilers we have always with us - but when, week after week, we wade through a morass of mediocrity, it's time to get concerned about the state of British television drama. Articles Indices:
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