I caught The Antiques Roadshow (BBC1, Sunday) almost by accident the other day. It was one of those moments when you’re too lazy to turn the television off, you flip through the numbers on the remote, and there it is. Comfort viewing for Sunday evenings. It is 28 years old now, almost an antique itself. ‘You can just see where someone has added a new presenter, but it’s an Aspel, so it’s in keeping with the period. And look at the workmanship on those camera angles. You don’t often find quality like that on television these days…’
The programme became iconic 11 years after it began, when the BBC took it off to show Nelson Mandela leaving prison. The switchboard was overwhelmed. Oliver Pritchett wrote a funny piece in the Telegraph (I quote from memory): ‘And we interrupt our coverage of Nelson Mandela’s release to bring you the news that Mrs Ethel Gamage’s 19th-century coal scuttle could be worth as much as £150.’
The show is greed made genteel. The money shot, as they say in Hollywood, is the look of gratified — occasionally covetous — astonishment when someone learns that the old jigsaw is worth £600, or that they should put a reserve of £5,000 on a painting that’s been in the attic for 30 years. Like all shows that deal with members of the public, it is ruthlessly manipulative. Notice the envious crowds looking on when the expert discusses the glazed vase which cost £4.95 in a charity shop and might be worth £1,500. Their miserable knick-knacks, old jewellery boxes and walking sticks weren’t worth anything like enough, or didn’t have a fascinating back story. (‘My great-grandfather rescued it before Krakatoa exploded. But I think it’s an ugly old thing, myself…’)
In the past they showed the odd disappointment.
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