Skip to main content

Order, order! How BBC Parliament became the toast of TV

Political pandemonium turned a tiny channel into the BBC’s runaway success of the year. Its controller Peter Knowles reflects on a remarkable 12 months

‘It was about half one in the morning,” says Peter Knowles, recalling the peak of his crazy year as the controller of BBC Parliament, namely the night of the failed prorogation. “Black Rod showed up and Mr Speaker stayed in his chair. It was poisonous and marked a low point between the two sides. The speaker was sticking his neck out, saying this prorogation wasn’t lawful – and it didn’t look like he’d given Black Rod any warning. This was a very vivid drama playing out in the middle of the night. In terms of what I’ll remember from the year, it’ll be hard to beat that.”

Anyone pondering the state of British politics in 2019 may have reflected that every crisis is an opportunity in disguise. This year saw a brisk trade in ringtones of John Bercow, the former Speaker, bellowing “Order!” The spider brooch worn by the supreme court president Lady Hale as she shattered Boris Johnson’s dreams kickstarted a trend for animal-shaped accessories. And BBC Parliament – hitherto the forbidding, small-screen equivalent of the headmaster’s study – became our newest TV obsession.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2tQaL0o

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4
Post a Comment
Read more

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more