In an uncharacteristic fit of almost-robustness, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan has said she is ‘open-minded’ about scrapping the BBC licence fee and replacing it with a Netflix-style subscription service. Good idea. What would we actually miss if we didn’t subscribe?
Not an awful lot in my view. Some people cite David Attenborough’s nature documentaries but I certainly wouldn’t now that they have become so obtrusively propagandistic. The problem with the BBC isn’t — and never has been — lack of talented filmmakers, wildlife camera crews, presenters, actors, writers or production teams. It’s that, from news to drama, the BBC’s woke politics now subsume and corrupt its entire output.
Still, the occasional oddity does slip through the net. This week’s unlikeliest hit was Mathair a’ Chinn Suidhe, a documentary on BBC Alba about Donald Trump’s Scottish mum, Mary MacLeod. It was presented in Gaelic (with subtitles), which was the language Mary herself spoke as the youngest of ten children, raised in a two-bedroom cottage in the crofting township of Tong on the Isle of Lewis.
If Trump’s name weren’t such toxic box office with liberal America, Mary’s early life would surely by now have been made into a heartwarming movie.
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