Broadcast too late on Sunday night to be watched by anyone who got up early enough to go to church, Faith in the Frame, ITV’s new ten-part series about religious paintings, will probably be seen only by those who spend their lives intrigued by faith, but never quite make the leap to get involved. This is a shame, because it is a serious attempt to use art as a way into religion: what did the work in question mean to its artist, its patron, its contemporaries — and what does it mean to us today?
I use the word “serious” with particular deliberation, because Melvyn Bragg, whose baby this is, appears to be consciously taking us back to a far earlier style of TV, the high-minded debate. Each week, he chairs a discussion about one work of art with three experts, sitting around a table piled high with reference books (to which none of them refer). There is not a glass of Chardonnay in sight. So uncompromising is the tone that one is surprised to find it filmed in colour.
Last week, the subject was Stanley Spencer’s great The Resurrection — Cookham, and I also watched a preview of the programme considering the far less well-known Wenhaston Doom. The panel members are chosen for their relevant expertise — an extraordinarily retrograde step.
It was good indeed to hear universal praise for Spencer’s remarkable work, his concept of the resurrection as a heightened version of our commonplace, everyday delight, a transcendent vision of his beloved village of Cookham — an invitation, for all its particularity, to us all to open our eyes and see the presence of God around us.
Discussion of the Wenhaston Doom focused less on the work itself than on its significance, and its miraculous rediscovery — one of the surviving handful of the 11,000-odd doom paintings that adorned our medieval churches.
Was its function to terrify — or to assure the congregation of God’s mercy? How much of its serious purpose is undercut by the humour of the depiction of hell’s demons, or even by the erotic appeal of the naked bodies? The distinction between the Catholic acceptance of such ambiguities and the Puritan insistence that they were out of place in God’s house was well made.
Lord Bragg’s chairmanship could not be more self-effacing. He could have been more directive, as promising or awkward lines of argument were short-circuited by new contributions. This series would offer much to any discussion group: why not broadcast it at a reasonable time?
Judgement Day came to Easington, Co. Durham, when The Secret Millionaire (C4, Tuesday of last week) handed out his cheques, after spending a week under cover to decide where his largesse would give greatest benefit to a community suffering severe post-industrial deprivation. The local brass band, a welfare-club youth project, and a fantastic community farm all received five-figure cheques.
My strongest impressions were: first, the wonderful work, against all the odds, of those who ran the projects long before TV handed out magic cheques; and, second, of the transformation wrought in rather than by the admirable millionaire himself, Carl Hopkins. |
back to Media
previous story
|
next story 
back to top
.gif "Caris Magazine for girls aged 11 to 16 © site")
