What makes Britain mediocre?

So, the dust has settled and the expectancy over the Olympics ceremony opening is over. After seven years, we’ve all seen what Danny Boyle and co came up with, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. While there was much to admire – I liked the nod to Close of Encounters of the Third Kind with the Olympic rings – on the whole, the event was too fractured, too piecemeal. It’s no wonder people around the world were left baffled. What was missing was a unifying principle or theme.

The event didn’t really come alive until the musical episode – but this came too late and felt rushed. Would that the whole event had revolved around Britain’s rich musical heritage. After all, this is a nation that had produced some of the best songwriters and musicians in the world. Given the number of nations that are in turmoil around the world, it may have been an idea to organise at least part of the ceremony around protest songs, taking in the abolitionist and Suffragette movements, as well as the Miners’ Strike. Perhaps this would have been too political – even for Danny Boyle. But I would have liked to have seen the Gay Mens’ Chorus in there!

Overall, this was a backward-looking piece, flying the flag for Britain’s past glories. There seemed to be little to celebrate about this nation’s future – unless it’s about text messaging and raving. By far my favourite part of the ceremony was watching all the athletes filling the stadium near the end. Their joy and delight at being there. You can forget all the flag waving -  that to me is the true meaning of the Olympics.

As I write, Britain is fourth is the medals table. I’m still waiting for a sports journalist to write a piece about how athletes are chosen to represent the country. Now, that’s a story on a par with the MPs expenses scandal...

Why can't America say the "a" word?

Why does America have such as problem with abortion? In the film, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, five women become mothers at roughly the same time. One of the women, who works on a food truck, gets pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a man she hasn’t seen since high school. And not once does she consider having an abortion. Really. But, not to worry, the woman miscarries, an experience which leaves her devastated. Of course.

Like the film Knocked Up in which a beautiful successful woman finds herself impregnated by a fat schleb with poor social skills, the word abortion is never even mentioned. The closest it gets is when one of the characters suggests the heroine should have a procedure that rhymes with “shmashmortion.”

Why is it that in Hollywood movies women confronted with an unplanned pregnancy almost always choose to keep the baby? One theory is that film producers, anxious to maximise box office receipts, don’t want to alienate the vocal and socially conservative Christian right. I find this odd as the big studios are happy to churn out films that depict harrowing scenes of violence for mainstream audiences. So it’s okay to show, for example, a guy getting shot in the eye in gruesome detail, but it’s not okay to show a scene where a woman chooses to have an abortion - even if the procedure itself isn‘t shown.

Earlier this year Rush Limbaugh caused a media storm when he called a Georgetown University law school student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for daring to speak in favour of the new rule requiring employers to offer health insurance plans that cover birth control. Thereafter we had a number of men weighing in on a subject that doesn’t affect them and they could not possible have any experience of. And Limbaugh only apologised to the student after his sponsors started deserting him. More recently we have seen several US states amending their abortion laws, making it that much more difficult for women to seek terminations. 

Given that American women have made so many strides in so many areas, just why is a woman’s right to choose such a hot button topic in the US? Nowhere else in the developed world is the subject of free birth control for women an issue. In any civilised society, it is taken as a given. Perhaps it is precisely because American women lead the way that the establishment is seeking to claw back some of its position. It’s difficult not to see the furore surrounding the debate as a backlash against women in general.

And until we see more women in positions of power in Hollywood, a woman’s right to choose will never be intelligently featured on the big screen. 

What network TV bosses aren't saying

The television upfronts in New York are just days away. This is when the major US networks gather together hundreds of advertisers to announce their autumn primetime schedules and screen splashy presentations of their new shows selected from the handfuls of pilots they made months earlier. Some $10bn of business is expected to be done. For creatives, who sometimes only learn that their show is being picked up hours before, the suspense can be excruciating.

I’m going to be the one to say the tough stuff. Here goes: the system doesn’t work anymore. It’s outmoded and the networks need to find a different way of doing things. For one thing, it’s incredibly wasteful. According to insiders, the one-in-ten princicple applies - one in ten TV scripts are bought, eventually made into pilots, then go to air. It’s a wonder the shareholders aren’t up in arms. Perhaps the gift bags really are that good.

I’ve had a look at all the new network drama pilots and I think I can safely predict a large number of early cancellations. And I doubt very much if there will be any break-out hits. Why? Because all the networks have played it safe. All I can see is a string of clichés, lazy stereotypes and unimaginative casting. Network TV is a landscape where all the women are beautiful with “rocking bods” and the men are heroic.

Make no mistake, these are difficult times. Never before have we had so many different forms of entertainment to choose from. However, television remains the most popular medium and people are watching more TV than ever before. A recent Nielsen report revealed that we watch an average of four hours and 39 minutes of TV a day.

This year, the networks have been disappointingly risk-averse. I have to ask, where is television’s answer to Steve Jobs? The person willing to shake things up? Now is the time for visionaries, not cronies.

The landscape on network TV for drama is growing increasingly difficult. Let’s take a look at some of last year’s casualties. The Playboy Club was one of the first to go. Then came Prime Suspect starring Maria Bello, NBC’s Southland, and let’s not forget Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova, the most expensive TV show ever made.

“It’s a bad system,” says Steve Levitan the co-creator of Modern Family. Because of the timing, casting directors are all chasing actors from a relatively small talent pool at the same time.  “It’s a giant game of musical chairs. You’re forced to make a decision before you’re ready because if you don’t, you’ll lose them,” Levitan adds.

All the networks are in the doldrums; all have lost audience share. As the studios struggle to develop new business, it feels very much as though we are in a creative vacuum. It doesn’t feel as though anyone is trying to find compelling original content.

I’m keeping my eye on Netflix. The movies-on-demand service is remaking British show House of Cards with Kevin Spacey and has also bought cult favourite, Arrested Development. They could well create a new model for content delivery. Network bosses take note.

Note to CBS: about your new Sherlock Holmes pilot, Elementary. If you want a hit series, replace Jonny Lee Miller with another British actor, Christopher McKay, (of Me & Orson Welles fame). Quite frankly, I am astounded that no one has snapped up this phenomenal actor for a pilot already. McKay makes Hugh Laurie look like a table leg.

Why I won't be going to the Olympics

I wish Paris had won the bid to host the Olympics. I don’t believe London deserved to win. Too many athletes in this country struggle to get the recognition and backing they deserve. Thus you have Olympiads sponsored by their local butcher. That is an unacceptable situation. And I’ve yet to see any journalist take a serious look at how those selected on the Olympic team are coping financially.

But what really disgusts me - yes, disgusts - is coverage of women’s sports in England. The coverage of last year’s Wimbledon was a case in point. Reporters seemed to concentrate almost exclusively on what they were wearing and the noises they made on court. That there was an eventual winner was almost an aside.

In England, there is a peculiar attitude to female athletes - especially if they don’t fit a particular image. Unless they are preferably white, middle-class and married with children, the press are ready to stick the knives in. For example, Venus and Serena Williams are among the finest athletes of their generation and yet journalists seldom credit the pair with their phenomenal success. Instead we get catty asides about how they look - that they are not “properly feminine”. Hello? They are professional athletes.

I’m a former athlete and I won’t be applying for tickets or watching the Games on TV. In fact, I’m planning on getting out of London entirely for the duration of the Olympics.

The English seem to prefer pathetic losers like Eddie the Eagle, the skijumper who crashed and burned in 1987. There is little understanding or appreciation in this country of what it takes to reach the top in athletes.

Be the best? The English apparently prefer mediocrity.

What the British press isn't saying

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the day former News of the World editor Andy Coulson and Conservative director of communications takes the stand at the Leveson Inquiry, the government chooses to release information about the Ministry of Defence’s decision to renege on an aircraft carrier deal, losing nearly £100 million in the process. How do you bury bad news? By releasing even worse news, of course!

Once, we had the best press in the world. Now British journalists appear to be asleep at the wheel. Coulson is currently on bail for his involvement in the phone hacking scandal. I want to know who is paying his legal fees and when was the last time he spoke to his former employer? Coulson failed to declare that he owned £40,000-worth of News Corp shares, a clear  conflict of interest, but claims this was merely an oversight as he was “busy“. Really? What questions was Coulson asked before he took up his position as director of communications?

During the inquiry, Coulson dismissed any idea that there was any deal to ensure the Murdochs the whole of BSkyB in return for the newspapers supporting the Conservatives. In his statement, he described Cameron as “a thoroughly decent, moral man”. How lovely.

This story has been so underreported in this country, it is truly staggering. I am certain that it will take an American journalist to reveal the true extent of the corruption - yes, corruption - involved.

Meanwhile, Cameron must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Terra Nova cancelled? I can't say I'm surprised

So Steven Spielberg’s expensive sci-fi drama Terra Nova has been cancelled after just one disappointing season. Just minutes into the first episode, I knew the series could not last. I was amazed that anyone connected with Lost could have had any creative input in this show. To describe Terra Nova as “white bread” would be doing a disservice to baked goods. The casting on the series was completely uninspired and unimaginative. Jason O’Mara seems to be Spielberg’s go-to guy, I’m not exactly sure why. As a supporting actor, O’Mara is fine. But as a leading man, I have no interest in him whatsoever.

Terra Nova presented an opportunity to go in a different direction. What a shame that Spielberg and his team didn’t take it. I mean, would it really have been such a stretch to have a woman paying the role of Commander Nathaniel Taylor, the camp boss? Would it? Actresses such as Juliet Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated Janet McNeer or Josette Simon would have all been far more compelling to watch than Stephen Lang. And what a trip it would have been to have an actress of Marion Cottilard’s caliber playing the lead!

I have not seen such a bland group of characters in a TV show for longer than I care to remember. There was not a single character you cared about - a fatal flaw in any new series. And I took real exception to the female characters. For me, watching Terra Nova was like going through a time warp back to 1954. Even the women in Mad Men are more progressive than this lot.

I can’t understand that a man with Spielberg’s experience doesn’t seem to understand that we’re tired of seeing such cookie-cutter characters - the lantern-jawed hero, the pin-up teen. The series felt like a cynical ploy to appeal to the lucrative “family quadrant” - tweens, teens, mums and dads. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the idea had been floated before a focus group before a script was written.

I just can’t understand that with such huge resources, a man like Spielberg could have got a series so very, very wrong. And I find it interesting that after some forty years in the business, Diablo Cody is the only female writer Spielberg has collaborated with (on The United States of Tara). I don’t think the two are entirely unconnected.

Awake: NBC's new show and another male fantasy

I watched the pilot episode of NBC’s new drama, Awake, created by Lone Star writer Kyle Killen. In the show, Jason Isaacs plays Michael Britten, a police detective who is in a serious car accident and then wakes up to two different realities - one in which his wife dies, and another where his son is killed. Now, Isaacs is a fine actor, but I am sorry to say I will not be watching that show again and here’s why.

The first time we see Laura Allen, who plays Isaacs’s wife, Hannah, she is wielding a paintbrush. Is she an artist? No, she’s doing a spot of home decorating. Later, we see her wearing a suit but we have no idea what work she does. When Hannah turns up for a dinner date wearing a red dress, I got it. “Okay, so we’re living in fantasy world here,” I thought.

Killen has created a world in which a white man gets to maintain a relationship with two attractive women, while very much playing the hero. Talk about having your cake and eating it. And it’s a world in which people of colour are relegated safely to the sidelines. I didn’t really see the point of either Steve Harris’ or Wilmer Valderrama characters - except to make the lead look good.

And I’d like to ask Killen a question: is he aware that there are a number of women on the police force throughout the US?

What’s interesting - and more than a little disconcerting - to notice is that just as women and people of colour make greater strides in the workplace and other spheres, there seems to be a growing backlash. Thus we have Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for daring to request that health insurance cover birth control - and not backing down until advertisers pulled their sponsorship. Then there are the Obama critics who repeatedly describe him as “Kenyan”.

That Hollywood is the preserve of white, middle-class males has been the industry’s dirty little secret for decades. But here’s the thing: the world is changing. Television and film are now global concerns. When you consider that 98 per cent of the world’s population is not white and the TV audiences are predominantly female, for industry bosses to continue to offer up such a white, phallocentric world view simply doesn’t make any sense.

No wonder audience numbers are down.