Adult viewing

On a train the other day I overheard a teenage schoolgirl tell her friends, ‘I’m going to watch Channel 4 from eight to midnight!’ When I got home I checked the Radio Times: she was looking forward to Embarrassing Teenage Bodies, Big Brother, Ugly Betty and finally Skins.

Thank heavens, there is still some non-teeny-telly left. Much of it is on BBC4. Take How to be a Composer (Saturday and Sunday), which took the rock critic and performer Paul Morley to the Royal Academy of Music to learn the trade. He arrived not even knowing how to read or write music.

To be frank, this was a pretty boring show, which is why I liked it. For once we weren’t being hectored, jollied along, nagged and cajoled into loving every minute. There was no heavily ironic voice-over pestering us to chortle over bits we might have missed. Every incident, however small, was allowed to speak for itself. Some of the time you suspected that the cameraman had set up, run the tape, then said, ‘Just nipping out for a coffee and a fag, back in 20 minutes, all right?’ The whole thing stretched out over two hours, and for much of the time not a great deal happened.

Which made our enjoyment of each moment all the keener. Morley’s composition teacher was a young woman called Hannah Riddell, who’s a TV natural, being clever, funny, lively, good-looking and engaging.