WILL passing through the eye of the needle endanger the House of
St Barnabas? Unexpected biblical allusion energised BBC2's The
Fifteen Billion Pound Railway (Wednesday of last week).
Londoners have got used to the series of massive holes that
punctuate the heart of our city, disrupting roads and transport as
the huge Crossrail line is built beneath our feet: this new
documentary series shows us what lies behind the hoardings.
I don't need much persuasion to be fired up by ambitious
engineering schemes, but the scale of this one is truly inspiring.
There is a series of contrasts that provides perspective: the
enormous size of the shafts; machinery that has to be slotted into
the most constricted space; the army of engineers, shown to be a
real fellowship; our capital revealed as an interlocking skein
where the texture of life and work is inextricably
interconnected.
The House of St Barnabas is the remarkable Georgian survival on
the corner of Soho Square, its clerical warden called to regular
meetings to discuss the import of every crack that opens up in its
unique rococo plasterwork; the eye of the needle the term given by
the engineers to the moment when the huge tunnelling machine must
drive the new tube through the already congested ground beneath
Tottenham Court Road Station.
It is only a foot above the existing Northern Line platform, and
two feet below two escalators. There is, perhaps, 5cms of
permissible error, and the station must remain open to passengers
throughout - and the machine weighs 1000 tons. I was moved by its
overriding criterion: that the thousands passing within only a few
feet must have no idea it is happening. It is a curious place to
encounter the spiritual charism of hiddenness.
Faith Schools Undercover: No clapping in class (Channel
4, Monday of last week) exposed the alleged extremism propagated on
our children: Islamic schools where applause is considered to be a
mark of Satan, and where boys are told that women must submit to
men. Or illegal ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, where nothing is
taught apart from the Torah and that everything about the modern
world is evil. Or fundamentalist Christian schools, where evolution
is held to be a malign fabrication.
Whatever evidence was produced by disgruntled former teachers,
pupils, or undercover reporters, the governing bodies invariably
insisted that they followed the path of toleration and openness.
Considering the gravity of its accusations, this was overall a thin
programme, missing the face-to-face encounters that would enable us
to draw our own conclusions.
Rich Hall's California Stars (BBC4, Sunday)
was another splendid 90 minutes of debunking, puncturing the bubble
of another aspect of Hall's native United States. The Golden State
did not wait for Hollywood to offer dreams: the 100,000 prospectors
of the 1858 gold rush found how chimerical was its promised fame
and fortune.
Hall's sardonic, gruff indignation skewered the hippy freedoms
of the '60s and today's Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, finding them
all sadly wanting - fantasies for the masses that enable a few to
become hugely rich.