IT WAS the best of times,
it was the worst of times. Wakefield, the first subject of BBC4's
three-part series Cathedrals (Tuesday of last week), was
just reaching the climax of a huge renovation and reordering
process, but simultaneously facing the prospect of losing its
identity as the mother church of its own diocese, looking to a
future where it would be one of three cathedrals in a new
super-diocese.
We have seen other
fly-on-the-wall TV portraits of our great churches in recent years,
but this one paid closer attention to the issue that really affects
us: pastoral reorganisation, and it was willing to spend time
exploring the situation and the emotions it raises. The director
seemed personally engaged, speaking more from the inside than from
the outside looking in - interested, fascinated even, but
essentially uninvolved.
The programme started
with poetry, Auden quoted over Wakefield in the snow. But this was
no glossy chocolate-box fantasy of Ye Olde Englande, the C of E
essentially a branch of cosy heritage. We were left in no doubt
that West Yorkshire is in economic trouble, and that lunches for
the homeless, and singing groups for Alzheimer's sufferers are as
central to the ministry of this cathedral as choral evensong.
The frisson for readers
of this paper is that we knew that the decision about diocesan
merging would go the way the Dean, Chapter, and Synod desperately
hoped it would not; that their plans for an independent future
would be trumped by others. We sat in on the kind of facilitated
consultation meeting where the well-meaning process masks the
inevitable decision that is already brewing elsewhere. We got to
know the clergy, staff, and volunteers, and by the end. felt
personally engaged, hoping that the new future will offer stability
and context for the place still to feel that it is the cathedral
for all Wakefieldians, whether they go to church or not.
In Strange Days: Cold
War Britain (Tuesday, BBC2), Dominic Sandbrook was a splendid
guide to that far-off country, Britain in the '40s and '50s. Russia
moved from being our gallant allies who had trounced Hitler to a
totalitarian monster willing to stop at nothing to subvert our
freedom. The then Dean of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson, was the most
fervent among the left-leaning intellectuals eager to support
Stalin, receiving his Lenin Peace Prize with pride, and not sending
it back after the brutal invasion of Hungary.
We saw, blooming among
the post-war bomb-sites and deprivation, a country of deference,
decorum, and conformism, gradually become more and more insecure,
the humiliation of Suez proving that our imperial role was well and
truly over. This was a fascinating and brilliantly presented
piece.
The bright uplands achieved over the past 60-plus years are
presented in Fresh Meat (Channel 4, Mondays), the
foul-mouthed comedy about a provincial student house-share. Sex,
drugs, and alcohol are the baseline on which everything else is
constructed, hard studying having no place except for losers. The
only slight redemptive feature is that, ultimately, genuine mutual
support and compassion trump the hysterical self-gratification.