CHANNEL 4 is countering criticism that its output is relentlessly dumbed down by launching a new series considering the phenomenon of Child Genius (Thursday of last week). Ten children with astonishing intellectual abilities will be followed at two-year intervals, to see how they develop.
Unfortunately, after seeing the first episode, I felt it was less like a celebration of cleverness than like a plea for help for those who suffer from a disability. Many, although not all, of the subjects display an obnoxious awareness of their outstanding achievements: the term “show-off” rose unbidden to my mind again and again.
The most fascinating thing was to watch the parents: most, although not all, seemed extremely keen to foster their offsprings’ braininess. For some, it looked suspiciously like a way of getting back at society for their own painfully evident oddness. It all bore out the truth of Philip Larkin’s dictum of what Mum and Dad do to you — an aphorism that really ought to be set as the gradual for Family Sunday.
Of course, our sympathy was also aroused — how impossible it must be to have to bite your lip constantly in class, to sit still rather than wave your hand in the air, shouting out “Me! Me! Me, Miss!” when none of the surrounding clodhoppers have a clue what the answer is. (I speak, as I’m sure you’re aware, from bitter experience.)
Being a prizewinning novelist, chess-player, mathematician, or pianist does not endear you to your classmates in the same way that, disgracefully, it does if you’re good at boring old footy. The programme caused us to ponder not merely the achievements and difficulties of the children depicted, but also the values and failures of our society.
Child genius is hardly the term to be applied to any of Frank Gallagher’s offspring in Shameless (Channel 4, Tuesday of last week), although the way these feckless and dysfunctional youths manage to stay ahead of the system deserves some kind of award — probably an ASBO.
Now in its fourth series, this raucous depiction of everyday life on a sink estate seems to me to have lost something of its edge, and to lapse more quickly into sentiment. The ease with which the damage caused by crime, drugs, alcohol, and sex is shrugged off becomes more irritating. But, if you close your ears to the shocking language, at its best this marvellously acted comedy displays a pace and an eagerness to enter the most squalid situation which, paradoxically, celebrates life itself.
Life in the Forest of Dean contains a few surprises, according to Primeval (ITV, Saturday). If you can find it, there’s an anomaly — a portal that lets you enter prehistory, and allows prehistoric monsters to savage 2007 Britain.
The first programme of this new sci-fi series sets out a predictable cast of characters: brainy-but-good-looking academic; geeky youth; gorgeous lab assistant; and a sinister Home Office civil servant. But I found it surprisingly enjoyable, and less pretentious than Doctor Who. The emotional heart of the piece is that the handsome boffin lost his wife through a similar portal, and is desperate to bring her back. Who would have expected, on Saturday prime-time ITV, a rewriting of Orpheus and Euridice?
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