All eyes on Melvyn’s hair

An American reporter once said to me that all television in his country was fundamentally about race, and all TV in this country was about class. There was some truth there, I thought, if exaggerated. Then in one week along comes a new Melvyn Bragg series about class and another attempt to revive Upstairs, Downstairs, whose original ended on ITV some 37 years ago.

Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture
began at BBC2’s prime time on Friday. There are problems with documentaries about class. In this case, one difficulty is Melvyn’s hypnotic hair. When he’s indoors, it is thick and lustrous, as if a King Charles spaniel had settled on his head. Out of doors, in the wind, it looks like a haystack in a hurricane, or a game of pick-up-sticks gone lethally wrong. You can’t take your eyes off it. It follows you round the room. His tresses seem to be pointing wildly at something, trying to signal a message he hasn’t got time to bring us himself.