Steve Scott v Bizarre ER

Posted by Remote Control on March 7, 2008 6:58 PM | Permalink

IT'S probably all Michael Burke's fault. While everyone's always known that things involving the police, ambulance or fire service will quite normally fill up slots on the news, it was probably Michael Burke's 999 programme which first set off the emergency services as an entertainment industry too.

Admittedly, 999 was rather worthy programme in many respects - it handed out life-saving advice for all manner of circumstances so that we all felt prepared, rather like human Lassies, to respond if we saw someone at the bottom of a cliff.

Cut through the swathe of programmes which have followed since and it soon becomes apparent that programme makers quickly dispensed with the notion of public-service information. There was Police, Camera, Action which just took fast car chases, for example. Even that, though, was watchable because it was the only programme of its type. And the high-speed chases were entertaining - like the one which ended up with a man running into a cinema and sitting down with the audience having led the police on a 20-minute chase through Preston.

Then the TV production companies decided that the clips they featured didn't even have to be that out of the ordinary. Whole channels on Sky are now filled with back-to-back fly-on-the-wall action, although what the word action now describes has obviously become quite a broad church. And, at some point, Jamie Theakston made the transition from children's TV presenter to staple of these programmes, rarely off the BBC primetime schedules with programmes which invariably involve commentary which goes along the line: "Back on the M62, PC Garry Duggan has asked the driver of a wide load to pull over and explain to him why he has not been accompanied by the required support vehicle."

If anything, it should have led to a drop in the number of police callouts. After all, there are so many TV crews accompanying the emergency services that I suspect that, on any given night in a big city, you're as likely to be met by a TV crew following a constable as you are to have your shoes turned pink by some vomiting Hooch-swilling teen. Such is the saturation coverage of the emergency services that their programmes are now being used as evidence in court cases - recently, BBC3 programme just happened to be in a hospital when a patient came in with burns. The judge at the health and safety case which followed had a ring-side seat to the action.

Is it cheap TV? Certainly. Freelance cameraman follows crew. Couple of hours editing, bingo, six-part series made. It's a well-established genre now, though god knows what it is called. But it figures that, like every other genre, it has its own clips show. So step forward Nightwatch with Steve Scott (Witching Hour, ITV1, almost every night). Steve Scott's the bushy-eyebrowed one off ITV News who appears to have been shunted from the news studio to facilitate the return of Sir Trevor McDonald (broadcasting legend, digital dinosaur). Quite how they pitched Nightwatch too him, I don't know. I doubt it went like this (even though it should): "We want you to stand in a studio, six nights a week, at a time when it's generally drunks and insomniacs watching, and show different 'events' involving the emergency services. You know, drunk kids vomiting, the odd house fire, that sort of thing."

Or as ITV describes it: "Steve Scott goes on board and on the scene with fire crews, paramedics, ambulance teams and doctors and nurses as they make split-second, live-or-die decisions and fight to save lives"

Or as they should put it: Medics do their jobs. No news here, lads.

It's not informative, it's just like one, big showcase for the emergency services. Is that entertainment? I think not. But there's life in this genre yet, as Bizarre ER (BBC 3, you know the drill, repeated frequently) proves. Putting a camera in an ambulance is so old hat. How's this for a description one-liner: "Documentary series about eye-watering cases in an A&E department." Now this is entertainment: A student who has trapped his testicles under a gearbox, a man's unforuntate accident with a golf ball, an oil-worker who swallowed a tooth pick.

Say what you want about BBC 3, but it's breathed new life into an old dog.