In the throes of the recent muddle-headed debate about the need for a 'root and branch reform' of the BBC, a number of self-qualified and self-appointed 'experts' have focused in on BBC Three and BBC Four, scoffing at a percieved lack of both purpose and ability to generate distinctive or worthwhile programming. This is of course a load of nonsense, as anyone who has heard of Gavin And Stacey, The Thick Of It or Torchwood should be able to attest but probably won't if it doesn't suit their argument; and as further proof, here's a review I once wrote of a hidden and barely-noticed treat that once appeared on BBC4...
It’s probably escaped most people’s attention, but for the past six weeks (and finishing tonight, sadly), BBC Four has been playing host to what is possibly the most enjoyably surreal television treat of the year.
Though the title gives little of this away, Britain’s Best Drives essentially involves Richard Wilson – in a move very much in character for a man who will lend his name to anything from a ‘dancercise’ video to the shocking waste of paper that was Richard Wilson’s Big Book Of I Don’t Believe It– hopping in a procession of Fonz-friendly vintage automobiles to recreate what an anicent AA Guide picked out as the most enjoyable and picturesque British motoring routes of the late fifties, in honour of fifty years of something or other.
Surprisingly these must-get-home-in-time-for-Quatermass road-trip map-doodles are more or less still intact, meaning that we are deprived of the joy of seeing Richard Wilson disgruntledly tearing through shopping centres at 70mph, but what’s more interesting are the places that he stops off at along the way. They’re exactly the sort of quiet, local trade-dominated villages that you’d think time had completely stood still in, yet his chats with the locals reveal that their lives have in fact changed almost immeasurably over the past fifty years, albeit in gradual and subtle ways that have altered or consigned to history some things that barely anyone noticed in the first place. And aside from that, there are encounters with a healthy quotient of unselfconscious eccentrics, from the man well into his seventies still operating a one-man coal mine built on what must surely be the world’s smallest seam to 'some of these goths I've been hearing about’ in Whitby.
As if to put the Morris Traveller icing on the whole bizarre retro-but-not-retro cake, the series has been given a light coating of period orchestral music, including – to the undoubted surprise and delight of several viewers – that sweeping piece that briefly plays over the opening credits of Monty Python And The Holy Grail just as they start rambling on about Olaf Prott and his Moose-handling duties, only for the hoax credits to be abruptly wound downabout thirty seconds into it, and thereby creating a decade-straddling musical holy grail for fans of, um, Holy Grail.
All in all this is far from traditional Wednesday evening fare, but all the better for it and quite a nice way to kick off off an evening’s viewing. Here’s to a second series of Britain’s Best Drives, in which Richard Wilson recreates the classic motoring routes of the sixties, driving a psychedelically-patterned Rolls Royce around Stevenage to the sound of The Waltham Green East Wapping Carpet Cleaning Rodent And Boggit Extermination Association.
