Apparently Monty Python wouldn’t get commissioned by the BBC if they came forward today.
Their unique brand of surrealist humour might have been hilarious and ground-breaking, but five straight white men from Oxbridge is apparently no longer the place from where humour emerges.
Apparently, their “voice” and “story” is no longer “original” enough.
And that’s been the BBC’s position for a while now – I suspect if we made a freedom of information request that was worded carefully enough, we might get some extraordinary data.
For example, if we asked, “What percentage of senior full-time jobs at the BBC have been filled by straight white men in the last five years” and you might get quite a round answer.
By which I mean very close to 0%.
And why?
Well, the rabid liberals that run the place are no longer able to perceive their own biases – the line they crossed long ago is now a dot to them, and it’s receding fast in their rear-view mirror.
Take Emily Maitlis interviewing the Hungarian Foreign Minister recently – the barely-impartial mask that most leftist BBC journalists manage to awkwardly maintain some of the time eluded her completely, and we saw the deluded Marxist peep out from behind it, like poor old Bilbo demonically entranced by his desire for the ring. Maitlis appears similarly entranced by her desire for the ex-communist riddled EU.
Her and her colleagues are no longer Bilbo or his unfortunate kinsman Smeagol.
They have become Gollum.
And the EU is their precious.
I don’t think Graham Chapman was straight – though he hadn’t come out when Python was commissioned. And Terry Gilliam wasn’t Oxbridge, but perhaps we don’t count him as one of the ‘famous five’.
But, of course, your strictures about the Beeb – fast becoming a parody of itself – are spot on.
They did do a parody show about themselves, very good too, apparently someone thought it was a vision statement though
I think W1A was heavily toned down, as to depict the true level of insanity afflicting the Beeb would have left audiences incredulous. See the occasional Birtspeak 2.0 column in Private Eye – the current issue carries a particularly fine example.
I think there’s a rough rule of thumb that once places lose their real power, the madness starts setting in fast. Like, art galleries got pretty stupid when artists realised they could express themselves better with film. So a bunch of ludicrous charlatans started doing gallery art. The BBC is losing power. If I was a talented British writer, I’d be getting my CV into Amazon and Netflix first where I wouldn’t have to fit with the PC agenda. And this is going to only make things worse for anyone who fits their verboten criteria. And it’ll make the BBC… Read more »
True, but you still have to pay for those women ‘because of the unique way the BBC is funded”.
“I watch something on YouTube instead.”
Bingo! It seems to me that every subject of interest is better served by citizen programme making than by conventional broadcasters these days. (Unless you get off on the wet fart of political correctness and some brain-dead coke-head mocking you for voting leave and not supporting Corbyn that is.)