We Americans love remaking British TV. Must the UK remake our odious politicians? | Dave Schilling
I“I have always wanted to visit the United Kingdom. It may seem absurd, since I am from California – the house of Sunshine, half bare bodies and the studio where they film Jeopardy. What could shoot me on the cold, humid and gray banks from England? Oppressive brunette food? Doubted colonialist history? Tesco? No, it’s the brilliant box that vibrated with everything that goes for culture in my small town: television.
British television was an obsession in my house, via these affordable exotic entertainment providers at PBS. We would get chic dishes through the Masterpiece Theater series, but also more comedies at the bottom of Bac as you are served? (A variety of sexually obsessed retail clerks are triggered on each other) or to maintain appearances (the lower middle class OAF desperately want they are chic). I had no concept of what people said in their thick accents or most of the jokes meant, in particular the double hearings.
But even stupid shows seemed intelligent. I learned more about the European history of Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and the Blackadder series by Ben Elton than never at school. British television, especially comedies, has assumed a certain futility to life. This will probably not improve. In fact, it could get worse. Often. It is a tradition that has led to other classic sitcoms such as the mité parridge and the office, which I discovered in college. If it is a criminal drama in small town or a half-hour comedy, British television will generally express something close to misery when credits are driving. In the land of good humor and American opportunities, it was like a reality balm.
My obsession with everything British (even food) continued in adulthood, but despite this permanent interest, I had never visited the United Kingdom before this year. I had seemed to have chosen the worst year imaginable. Or maybe the best. The country is in the midst of a political upheaval. The far -right reform party of Nigel Farage is underway, commanding the ballot boxes. Obviously, the first thing I did upon my arrival was to refer to television to see how it in relation to the American media, which feels at any time as Jurassic Park after the exit of electricity.
In the United States, we are obsessed with the overhaul of British television programs – the office, Steptoe and his absolutely fabulous son. But the British prefer to redo our politicians. They are just not so good in this area.
Farage is the English Trump, but only in the sense that he is dangerously unreserved for leadership and therefore believes that he is really qualified. He recently said that migrants “ate swans” in the parks. I can imagine that a television manager is angry their fist with the adaptation of the Holboureurs of the famous comment of Trump dog. “Who would really eat a swan?” You don’t even understand! “
Nigel Farage is just not the showman that Trump is, no more than Doctor Who is as flashy as Star Wars or Star Trek. British News is less resolved on him than we are with Trump. Because Farage is so sticky and second rate, it was easier for the British media to chase it like a thief so far. When I was in London this summer, it was the opposite of the Wall Wall which is America. This may be why I found that Great Britain of ITV is so relaxing to watch. The notable lack of cries or partisan resentment. The reassuring presence of the former Labor politician and ancient dance strictly dancing Ed Balls. Anyway, I liked my daily dose of dry toast in the form of television. A recent GMB episode presented a segment on an application designed to identify and catalog the butterflies of the United Kingdom. It was sweet, until the presenter reminds the public that this is important because the butterflies set up because of the climate crisis. Even the segments of joyful news should remind you that life is a series of small underworlds.
But I did a few things in addition to watching television. The Tate Modern is easily the best museum of contemporary art that I have never been. I think that reading a newspaper in a pub at 11 a.m. is as civilized as life. I cannot say if Waitrose is chic or the equivalent of Trader Joe, but they had everything I needed, as well as delicious cheeses that I have never heard of. The Barbican estate, where I stayed, is an architectural wonder that could never exist in a place like California. It is deliberately difficult to move, has an art gallery and a cinema room, and people openly crush bottles of wine in the court long after bedtime. I found that people took if seriously the tube label that I wondered if I did not give up your place for an elderly person was now punishable by the stoning. I’m sure there is a lot of horrible behavior in London, but I was so impatient to have fun that I didn’t even notice. And almost no one I met in London asked me, the American stupid, about Donald Trump. Almost.
My only conversation on Trump took place in Whitechapel, a district known for a series of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper who now houses a significant immigrant population – especially people from Bangladesh. A sign was added to the Whitechapel tube station in Bengali, which upset Elon Musk (which is certainly not British) and accompanied by right -wing politicians obsessed with the fight against multiculturalism. I was impatient to have a good experience of British curry before returning to Los Angeles and I received a recommendation for a restaurant in Whitechapel by my friend and co-creator of inbetweeners, Iain Morris (who is definitely British). I was very specifically asked to name the restaurant, lest it be discovered by more brutal American tourists like me. This is what Dishoom serves, after all.
After setting the bill for my meal, the server / owner asked me what I thought of “him”. The film had not yet released, so I realized that “Him” meant Trump. I said that I was generally not a fan, that he would not like a place like the restaurant in which we were and that I certainly did not vote for him. He gleaned, as if I had read him a joke written on a Popsicle stick. “Each time an American comes here and I ask if they vote for him, they say no,” he replied. I assumed that it is because the people who voted for him do not stop in a curry house in Whitechapel during their vacation in the United Kingdom.
British and American political dilemmas can sometimes look strangely. Trump and Farage both stayed much longer than anyone waiting for him. The anti-immigrant and anti-Trans feeling animates the good wings of the two nations. The “Unite The Kingdom” rally looks like a Hyper busy Maga gathering. But, as the quality of our respective cheeses, we could not be more different. Nihilism and a crazy impulse to start from scratch an enliven the two cultural schisms, but while in the United States, the face of populism is the frozen Trump eyebrow, in Great Britain, it is the empty smile of frage. A New Yorker feature film described the atmosphere of the reform party conference as a jubilant. Farage is always smiling, which is either comforting to his sympathizers, or terrifying for his detractors. Be that as it may, the reform captures the imagination of Great Britain precisely because of that smile.
The work and the conservatives have desperate to prove that they are the most serious, when what the nation seems to want, it is someone who admits that things are not great, but that the country (and the world) has a future. The future reform offering is terrifying that looks much more like the worst aspects of modern America, but it is nevertheless a vision. What afflicts the United States and the United Kingdom is a feeling of emptiness, futility and an increasing awareness that we are all stuck. The technology, the major economic forces that we do not understand and a declining social security net left the average citizen in a state of abandonment and isolation. The Democratic Party and the Labor Party just want things to come back to a mythical state of normality, desperately nostalgic and disconnected. This pushed the dreamers, the malcontents and the futurists on the sidelines. Maga and the reform seem nostalgic, but what they offer is not a return to anything, but a radical remodeling and a perversion of the system that maintains our society.
Faced with the sinister reality of British television every day during my trip, I sucked in a little good ol ‘Yankee Razzle -Dazzle – a dose of insane optimism. I think the most powerful similarity between our two countries may be that we could both use part of this right now.
