All change for Jeremy Paxman in look at the Empire
And so, a night at home being berated, belittled and humiliated. Yippee, dial a pizza – it's a night in with Jeremy Paxman. Normally an experience on a par with, say, masochism.
And so, a night at home being berated, belittled and humiliated. Yippee, dial a pizza – it's a night in with Jeremy Paxman. Normally an experience on a par with, say, masochism.
Except last night the Newsnight and University Challenge 'bully' didn't shout at us. He didn't berate.
Nor did he belittle or throw a board rubber at the thickos at the back of the class.
Instead he told us a story. And a good one, too.
Once upon a time, Britain owned lots of things, like other countries and their people, by, er, nicking them.
In the first episode of Empire, a five-part BBC1 documentary about the history of the British Empire, Paxo asked: "How did a small country grow such a big head?" (No, he wasn't looking in the mirror at the time).
Last night he nipped over to India and the Middle East in a blue linen shirt to take an overview of our colonial past, and told us that in our lust for power and to civilize the globe, Britain – for a time – controlled a quarter of the world's population.
He suggested that the memory of empire has never fully faded, and that this is why Britain still believes it is entitled to a place at the world's top table, despite our considerable loss of global influence.
But the most judgmental journalist did quite a remarkable thing. For once he declined to be judgmental.
Which was a bit like asking Gordon Ramsay not to turn the air blue in reference to his pollocks.
But he managed it without resorting to too much self-congratulatory rhetoric.
In what was a brilliantly shot and insightful piece of rarely talked about history, this was the new, improved Paxman: reasoned, measured; the version that tells the story, not becomes part of it.
Paxman may have become a caricature, a spitting image of his Spitting Image puppet, but even so he would make compulsive viewing if he were the voice of Postman Pat.
And Empire would not have been half the programme it is had it been presented by, say, Martin Clunes. Or, come to that, any object made of rubber.
The last time we saw Paxo standing up was in Who Do You Think You Are? A series, which, you suspect, was as much about the travel as it was about the horrible things you normally find out about yourself.
But in a way, Empire was Who Do You Think You Are? for the entire British people.
It is said that in times of austerity, the only way to look is back. As in, back to better times, times that whiff of the comforts of the simple and the familiar; basically back to Downton Abbey and the comfy slipper scenes of Larkrise to Candleford and to Upstairs Downstairs.
In Empire, then, Paxman has not chosen an easy option for hard times, although to lighten matters up it would have been an easy, if cheap, option to have had him trussed up in period costume.
As an imperial viceroy, for example. Or maybe not. The rest of the world would have just laughed and told us to naff off home with its big imperial ideas.
Instead Jezza went to the beach. He took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs and waved a little British flag. He looked a bit pathetic.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Ben Bentley
