Living TV has for the last few years ridden the crest of a “paranormal” wave – most successfully with their “Most Haunted” franchise, in which teams of “ghosthunters” arrive at some old building and try to sense the presence of spirits from days of old.
There are two key elements to these programmes: the “psychic” Derek Acorah, once a Liverpool Reserves footballer, who spends his time divining links to the “spirit world”; and shooting everything in the dark using nightvision cameras that make everything green.
The franchise is quite a money earner, with plenty of DVD spin-off sales alongside the regular series and live specials.
It’s entertaining junk that seems to be based around a game of murder in the dark, with strange noises, that are in no way caused by assistant producers off camera, oh no.
Anyhow, this brings us to Paranormal Egypt in which Derek Acorah goes to Egypt with historian Tessa Dunlop. Now, once upon a time, many moons ago, Tessa Dunlop worked in these parts as a producer on the Russ n Jono show for a while. She’s since done plenty of stuff, including stints at BBC London and TV presenting work on Time Team Live. And she did study history at Oxford, so she is a historian (mind you – I’m a mathematician, statistician and computing expert on the same basis).
Unfortunately her job on this programme is to breathlessly believe everything that “psychic” Derek tells her, putting some historical perspective into procedings as Derek conjours up various names and words, that he obviously didn’t look up earlier on Wikipedia. It’s a particular shame because it’s somehow demeaning to have no questionning of what’s going on – a cynical presence if you like. By being presented as a historian, yet accepting at face value everything a psychic is saying, probably doesn’t do anyone any favours. But I understand the needs of a professional broadcaster to get work.
The first programme was about Imhotep – you know the guy from The Mummy. Imhotep’s tomb has never been found, although it seems that most people think it’s likely to be at Saqqara which is handy, because that’s where the team was.
After some Lara Croft-style exploration, Derek finally said that, yes, Imhotep is definitely in this area, somewhere.
Phew.
Now obviously nobody can prove this one way or the other until such day, if it ever happens, that his tomb really is found. Unfortunately, Derek’s ability wasn’t enough to point us to an exact location where archaeologists could start digging. Shame.
I did laugh as they entered various pyramids and tombs that the cameras dropped into the usual nightvision mode, when it was patently obvious that the whole of the interior was wired up with electricity and lit up. They didn’t even turn the lights off – Egyptian health and safety rules I expect. Perhaps they had a particularly poor set of cameras that meant that in anything less than full sunshine they simply don’t work too well. I’d suggest the production team invests in new cameras if that was the case – most modern TV cameras operate in lowlight quite happily. Surely it wasn’t just for effect?
At one point Tessa gasped as she saw a small skull. Derek looked at it, and being something of an anthropologist as well, told us that it wasn’t human, but a monkey’s. He’s a better man than I (a B in O Level biology), as it could quite as easily have been a child’s skull. But then I didn’t have an Egyptian antiquities expert just off-camera. And I must say – fair play to him for keeping a straight face as Derek kept contacting the spirit world.
As I mentioned before regarding a couple of recent shows on ITV (oh say ably picked apart by Charlie Brooker in his new series of Screenwipe), there are some quite strict Ofcom codes about presenting psychic ability on television.
Demonstrations of predictive practices, whether ‘psychic’ or otherwise (eg horoscopes, palmistry), are acceptable only when they are presented as entertainment or are the subject of legitimate investigation. They should not include specific advice to particular contributors or viewers about health or medical matters or about personal finance. They should not be included at times when large numbers of children are expected to be watching.
Was it presented as “entertainment”? Well it was certainly entertaining, and to be taken with a pinch of salt. But I’m not sure that it quite abided by the rules. A legitimate investigation? “Investigation” is probably Living TV’s get-out clause, as it’s bandied around quite a lot. How you conduct an investigation with a Scouse ex-footballer who rubs his head and looks upward and downward a lot, I’m not sure, but that’s what we got. Somehow you just know that the DVD boxset will be out in time for Christmas.