No – I’m not talking about next week’s adaption of The Diary of Anne Frank, but books and their authors on TV.
There’s an interesting little discussion over at The Guardian about whether or not the Richard & Judy effect will continue with their new selection of titles now that they’re hidden away on Watch getting a fraction of their Channel 4 audience. I suspect it’ll make some difference, but sales won’t fall through the floor of selected titles.
But it does highlight the lack of book coverage on mainstream television. Aside from South Bank Shows or Imagines on authors, and the discussion of big new books on Newsnight Review or The Culture Show, where books are mixed in with other art forms, there really isn’t anything left.
Griff Rhys Jones once presented Bookworm for the BBC, but that finished in 2000. Sky Arts has The Book Show presented by Mariella Frostrop, but the ratings for it must be miniscule. Their sponsorship of the Hay festival means a nightly programme on during that too.
Radio is where there is plenty of book coverage with Open Book, again presented by Frostrop, and there’s also A Good Read and Bookclub. And the BBC World Service has the World Book Club. That’s aside from regular readings in daily slots of things like A Book At Bedtime and Book of the Week, as well as dramatisations, and opportunities to talk about books on a myriad of programmes from Start The Week to Simon Mayo (and his excellent weekly book segment).
But why is there nothing on television? With Richard & Judy out of sight, there’s an opportunity for someone else to fly that flag.
Books on TV
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2 responses to “Books on TV”
It’s a good question. In addition to the shows you’ve mention above, BBC Four used to have a series called The Readers and Writers Roadshow presented by Kate Mosse, while I seem to remember the unlikely pairing of David Aaronovitch and Nigella Lawson on Booked in the early 1990s.
Personally, I can’t stand the sort of show where an author is confronted by an audience of adoring readers – I much prefer simply watching authors talking about their work.
I work on The Culture Show and as you say we cover books, but our remit is very broad (as broad as culture) so it’s only a percentage of our output. We’ve recently shown an item on the poet Mick Imlah and we’ve got something coming up later in the month with Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorrah.
Was there a TV series that you thought dealt with books particularly well?
I caught a couple of episodes of that BBC Four series, but only vaguely remember Booked. I’ll look forward to your piece on Roberto Saviano – I read a long interview with him in The Observer and thought the film of Gomorrah was wonderful.
I completely agree that there’s little to be learned by simply placing a studio audience in the room with an author. The most revealing pieces tend to come from people who know their subjects, and can get the best out of an author – if indeed the author needs to be present which isn’t always the case.
Probably my favourite fiction coverage comes in the Simon Mayo show book slot on Five Live. A regular team of reviewers means that like newspaper writers, you begin to learn what some of them like and dislike. The author in the studio or down the line talking about their book, and then a straightforward reviewer with the author there to respond. This can make for some scary radio with a reviewer really not liking a book in front of the person who’s just spent the last year or more writing it, but it’s made me go out and buy titles on plenty of occassions.
But then in a perfect book show, as well as some reviews, I’d like to see thematic pieces on particular trends or interesting ideas. For example, the Scandinavian invasion of crime literature (with Wallander now reaching our screens), or revisiting classics that might enlighten us in our time such as The Way We Live Now in light of the credit crunch or even the Madoff fraud in the US.
What I don’t want to see are attempts to dramatise readings done of a five-pence budget. I know that this is always difficult – you can employ an actor to read a segment, but what do you show? Photo library images? Generic shots of locales like streets and signs? They’re fine – just not the unspoken reconstructions of the type you see on documentaries. Oh, and treat genre fiction fairly.
The BBC made The Big Read a few years ago, and perhaps there’s something similar to be done. While I can be a complete snob about not wanting to read a novel with a Richard & Judy sticker on the cover, I also understand that people who otherwise find choosing books a tricky experience, like the safety net of tried and trusted figures choosing their books for them. I’ve just been watching a repeat of a documentary about Mills & Boon on BBC Four in which writer Stella Duffy tries to write a novel for the said publishers. When she talked to some readers, I think it was reasonably clear that the read those books because they new what they were getting and they were safe. While I might love flicking through titles in a well-stocked Waterstones, others don’t, and find it as oppressive and scary a place as I might find a Bond Street fashion emporium.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Keep up the good work on The Culture Show!