Smart TV
Let’s celebrate BBC2 — birthplace of Fawlty Towers, Life on Earth and Line of Duty
■ IN A GALAXY FAR, far away, I was once a television network director for the BBC – which meant pressing the buttons to send the programmes down the chute to the nation, a lot of counting back from ten, and shouting whenever Grandstand overran. Of all the shifts, my favourite was always “Late Two”, which meant an evening steering the “alternative” channel and choosing which ident to run into which show. If you ever felt like the one with the silver paint pot being bombarded with lots of little 2s was being overused, it probably meant I was in the director’s chair that night.
On my first day it was explained that, all things being equal, the audience for BBC1 should always be larger than that of BBC2; for while the former represents the organisation as a whole and will often offer a passive viewing experience, the latter caters to a different audience with “appointment to view” needs.
The exception to this rule occurred in April 1985 (and after midnight on a Sunday evening at that) when the “second channel” kept a record 18.5million viewers glued to their screens watching Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis in the final of the World Snooker Championship.
This rule of thumb means I still get palpitations whenever Tim Henman appears on screen, remembering how we had to switch Wimbledon between channels just before the 6pm news because Tiger Tim had made it to the semi-final. But it also means that, for 60 years, BBC2 has been the launch platform for many fresh, experimental TV gems that would never have seen the light of day anywhere else, from Fawlty Towers and I, Claudius, to Yes Minister and The Ofce.
While screenwriter Jed Mercurio lapped up the record audiences that came with Line of Duty’s move from BBC2 to BBC1 in 2017, Jeremy Clarkson refused to let Top Gear go the same way, no doubt aware that his subversive shtick had found its natural home on BBC2. The audience appreciation index for the channel’s shows continues to score disproportionately high, the relative newbie Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing outgunning even the wonders of Gardeners’ World and the Proms.
It’s a satisfying quirk of television history that BBC2’s 60th birthday falls in the same week as Earth Day, because the person who did arguably the most to define the channel is also the one who has done an incontestable amount to further our understanding and awe of our planet. Unusually, this isn’t hyperbole.
