It might sound sad, but it's not

Posted by Remote Control on June 22, 2008 11:21 PM | Permalink

SUNDAY evening telly ain't what it used to be, is it? Well, actually, yes it is. It's utterly crap. If ever there is a time of the week when the National Grid might feel a surge as television sets the country over flick between channels at lightning spped, it's Sunday evening.

This week, my hunt for a decent programme on a Sunday evening took me to BBC 4. It's normally a channel I skip by in a hurry - it's highbrow remit, a kind of doffing of the cap by the BBC to its traditional roots, doesn't normally appeal - but The Secret Life of the Motorway (BBC 4, Sundays, 8pm) stopped me in my tracks.

Narrated by Phillip Glennister, aka Gene Hunt from Ashes to Ashes, it is basically a look back at the history of the motorway network. And here's the thing, it was bloody interesting.

Plenty of black and white footage, and loads of brilliant interviews with people involved in the motorways over the years. I know it should sound dull. I know it should have me demanding to know what sort of anorak watches this type of programme. But it had me gripped. I even live paused it when I went to the kitchen.

For example, did you know that at first, there wasn't an upper speed limit, and when one was proposed, there were protests which would put out pathetic recent opposition to fuel prices to shame? Did you know that the first motorways didn't have fences between the two carriageways, and that people thought nothing of just doing u-turns across the central reservations if they missed a junction?

Then there was the building of the final link of the M62 - part of which used to be closed for four months of the year due to bad weather. This final link was the really bleak part, and the way the people who were involved in building it spoke, you'd have thought they were up in Alaska, not just west of Bradford.

Maybe it's the script, maybe it's the footage. Maybe it's the memories, maybe it's the fact we use motorways day in, day out without a second thought. Whatever the secret of this documentary about a fundamentally boring part of our lives is, it works. I even cheered when I realised at the end that it wasn't a one off.

I think I've found Sunday night TV salvation. On BBC 4.