THE BBC IS LOSING TOUCH WITH REALITY

April 17 1996 / posted April 28, 1996
Source: The electronic Telegraph
Brenda Maddox says that, as the millennium approaches, television programme-makers are becoming obsessed with the paranormal.

When I predicted that 1996 would see the outbreak of millenarianism, I never thought it would be so bad. As the magic date approaches, the supernatural is all over our screens, and I'm not just talking about Anne and Nick's Good Morning phone-in on extraterrestrials yesterday. Ghoulies, ghosties and flying saucers are now being publicised by the BBC as, if you please, "factual".

There are no ghosts. I thought this was a generally accepted fact - not a controversial proposition such as "There is no God". But the BBC's current series, Secrets of the Paranormal, prepared by its feet-on-the ground Community Programme Unit, allows mystic-communers to proclaim, unchallenged, their unearthly powers. Tomorrow night will give us Raymond, a man who, putting on a funny voice and staring at the camera in a meaningful way, tells us he is also "Paul", the ghost of a doctor who died 2,000 years ago.

Fair enough. If Raymond thinks he is inhabited by Paul, no matter - unless, as in one of the most repellent scenes I have seen offered for early-evening television, he burrows loony fingers into an ailing old man's pasty flesh, and claims to locate the bladder.

Raymond says cheerfully that he has never had any medical training but Paul did, 2,000 years ago (that magic number). Whereupon Paul speaks up: "There's no difference between me and conventional doctors . . . Just because I'm dead shouldn't make any difference."

It should make a difference to the BBC. The national broadcasting organisation ought not to be putting out this rubbish. At very least the BBC should append a health warning, or an earnest studio discussion of the kind that followed Joan Bakewell's discovery in the Holy Land, in time for Easter, of tombs marked Jesus, Mary and Joseph. (If BBC1's Heart of the Matter does not win a Comedy of the Year award for this account of Joan's descent into the sepulchre, there is no justice).

Context is all, you'll agree. The realm of mystery is universally popular: witness the success of The X-Files, a hot favourite now on both Sky and the BBC. But the unexplainable as entertainment is one thing. David Copperfield claims only to be an illusionist, performing wondrous tricks we can't understand. Uri Geller, on the other hand, claims psychic powers and gets next week's Secrets of the Paranormal all to himself to claim, among other things, the healing power of his "energised" teddy bears.

More of the same comes in July, with Out of This World, another six-parter on ghosts, poltergeists, and psychic or out-of-body experiences. It promises a balanced look at the unexplained - that is, it will give equal weight to the sceptics. Is this balance? To present science as just another point of view?

In June, to be sure, the BBC will offer Strange Days, an inquiry into modern superstition. It is hardly reassuring, however, that this inquiry into "the retreat from reason" will take in both alternative medicine and psychotherapy - treatments provided by the NHS.

The BBC needs to apply the smack of firm editorship if this phantasmic tendency is not to get out of hand before the year 2000. Some things are still beyond the pale: wrestling, shopping, stripping. Ghostly communicating belongs there too, especially when you consider the basis of its appeal - hope offered to those suffering from incurable illness or grief.

The placard-wavers on last week's Secrets of the Supernatural demanded the public's right to know what "secret" information the Ministry of Defence holds on UFOs. Oh yes.

Meanwhile, the documents of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the publication of which has landed The Economist in hot water, show the commission about to approve two giant power mergers knowing that these are not in the public interest. The report, prepared for the Department of Trade and Industry, also reveals that one of the MMC's advisers, Patricia Hodgson, the BBC's director of policy and planning, courageously dissented from the decision, pointing out that the mergers would put up the price of electricity. What better information to keep from the public?

The hoary old official argument - that outsiders will not give advice to government agencies unless they are assured of secrecy - has been demolished by the one regulatory agency worthy of the name, Oftel, the telecommunications watchdog. When it invites opinions on proposed policies, Oftel asks that the responses submitted be allowed to be made public. It will promise confidentiality on request, but gives warning that such views may then be given less weight because they are not open to challenge.

Now there's an idea for the BBC. How about "Secrets of Government Departments"? A series that would unquestionably come from beyond the Great Divide.

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