Goodnight Britain - Review

Sunday 2nd December 2012

 

After being the victim of a night-time assault in second year by a housemate who revealed his sleepwalking habit by appearing in my room and throwing his toiletries bag at me, Goodnight Britain looked to me to be a timely insight into unusual sleeping habits.

According to the documentary, my housemate is one of half a million Britons who suffer from parasomnia, the technical term for sleep-walking, talking, and in the case of one woman featured on the programme, screaming and running about in the belief that you are being assaulted. I sympathised with her frazzled housemate.

Goodnight Britain also tackled sufferers with common problem sleep behaviours such as snoring and insomnia. The first step involved going all Carrie Mathison on the sleep sufferers and rigging their homes with night vision cameras, which were closely monitored by two sleep experts (who weirdly never seemed to need sleep) in their ‘sleep mobile’, where they proceeded to make borderline creepy observations such as “she looks like a good sleeper.”

To begin with it was hard not to see the funny side of the unusual night time activity; I have a friend who talks in her sleep and once hosted an imaginary dinner party where she offered me cheese canapés. In such cases, it’s easy to regard parasomnia as pretty harmless. However the show soon highlighted the serious side of dodgy sleeping, as one participant was suspended from his job as a van driver due to his suffering from obstructive sleep apnoea, a terrifying condition which meant he stopped breathing in between snores.

The insights into the science behind a good night’s sleep were fascinating, but stretched out to two hour long episodes things became increasingly tedious. In the first episode we watched the sufferers in their homes, before watching them again in a special ‘sleep house’, which felt like a particularly dull episode of Big Brother. It wasn’t until the second episode that they actually underwent treatment, a repetitive affair of analysing each night’s sleep, until the interesting tips about “sleep hygiene” and how to treat insomnia were buried under all the content. Condensed into one hour we could have avoided all the unnecessary attempts to inject drama with the most clichéd TV terms available – apparently treating the various conditions would mean “pushing sleepers to their limit”. Sometimes it’s better to just admit that you can’t wring that much drama out of watching someone try and sleep with a mouth guard in.

Nevertheless it was great to see the participants overcome the night behaviours that tormented them, and to see snorers returning from their banishment to the sofa. As for sleep walkers, apparently the solution is to rig their doors with alarms so they can’t get out of their bedrooms – I’ll definitely be trying that one out.

What Makes a Good Documentary Presenter?

April 21st 2012

On Tuesday night Mary Beard meandered onto our screens, peddling the eccentric Cambridge professor stereotype as she pedalled round Rome in the opening of her engaging Meet the Romans series. It struck me that this was the latest in a long line of outstanding factual series from the BBC, and so I decided to take a closer look at the different ways that they have hit upon a magic combination of fact and finesse in their documentary presenters.

My family and I were instantly entertained by Mary Beard. Not only was she a Trevi fountain of knowledge (I do apologise, it’s not often you can make a Rome pun), but she presented it with the unbridled joy of a slightly bonkers lady that the film crew had stumbled across and proceeded to follow round Rome, recording her excited and informed ramblings. At one point she told us that as she read tombstone inscriptions she could hear the voices of the dead Romans. Something tells me she didn’t just mean that as a figure of speech. Roaming round museums manhandling objects, chuckling gleefully at ancient wordplay, acting out a gladiator battle with miniature figurines a propos of nothing; Mary provided a glorious way into the fascinating world of Ancient Rome.

Another factual presenter who trades in a similar manner of enthusiasm is physicist Brian Cox, who rocketed to fame with his love of outer space. Whilst it goes without saying that documentary presenters are going to be passionate about their chosen subject, a special few find a way to infuse that passion in the audience, and Brian’s animated gesticulating and eager grin offered many a window into the wonders of the universe. Of course, in trying to attribute Brian Cox’s popularity merely to his infectious enthusiasm and knack for explaining confusing concepts, I am skirting round the elephant in the room. Brian is also famous for his ‘boyband good looks’, emphasised by many a lingering camera shot. It seems many viewers will become fascinated with any subject if the presenter has nice hair.

I apologise if my praise of Mr Cox sounds slightly disparaging. I don’t mean to discredit him: he’s very intelligent, a talented presenter and, for many, a heartthrob. But I cannot count myself among his legions of fans, because my heart belongs to Louis Theroux. He could make a documentary about soil (he may already have, such is the wide range of subjects he has covered), and I would still watch. His slight awkwardness, his innocent interviewing technique that can coerce all sorts of characters into suddenly blurting out something incriminating, and yes, his lovely face, all combine for me into the perfect documentary presenter. His polite probing into sensitive subjects leads people to reveal more to him than they would to others, and his open-mindedness and genuine interest in the people he meets has led to fascinating documentaries giving an insight into everything from the roughest of American jails to the home of Sir Jimmy Saville. A respectful tolerance for the weird and an ability to appear non-judgemental makes for superb factual television.

When I admitted my obsession with Louis to my sister several years ago she too praised his “doddery yet intelligent manner”, and I felt as if I had stumbled upon an underground religion. I now proudly number amongst his 172 thousand fans on Facebook, a veritable army of those with the good taste to recognise his humour, his consistently thought-provoking documentaries, and yes, his good looks (I won’t hear a word said against them).

Louis, Brian and Mary take on wildly different subject matters in their programmes, but all of them find a way to make their passions accessible and captivating for the audience. So it seems that the secret to being a great documentary presenter is having bundles of knowledge, passion and a lovely, lovely face. And if you haven’t got the latter, a bike and a bonkers demeanour will do just fine.