“THIS is my church.” We Are England: Cold Swim: Tynemouth (BBC1, Monday of last week) struck in me chords perhaps too personal, upsetting the Olympian objectivity that should characterise the critic. It is set in the glorious bay sheltered by the ruins of Tynemouth Priory, which I remember so well from August holidays in my childhood: that’s where we built sandcastles, fully dressed and wrapped in mackintoshes, vainly trying to counter the bitter North Sea cold.
Yet, the programme extolled the virtues of year-round cold-sea swimming, following a growing group of devotees who offered a series of private vignettes, moving testimony after moving testimony, of how this exercise had wrought miracles of healing and therapy.
Depression, alcoholism, mental illness — all are being cured by daring to plunge into icy waters. It was Kirk who claimed the seas as his place of worship, of meditation, but, throughout, the language and metaphors were religious. Here were conversions, purgings, renewals, the discovery of fellowship and belonging, the connection with nature and creation.
But never have I witnessed more clearly a model for the necessary, radical leap of faith. How much I believed them! How clearly I could see the transformations wrought in damaged lives, the healing and new hope! But to join them — no, that would be a step too far. For all my admiration, my wanting to share rather than merely witness the experience — alas! I remain, shivering, anchored to the shore.
David Baddiel: Jews don’t count (Channel 4, Monday of last week) was a bitter denunciation of contemporary British and US society, an uncovering of truths we would rather ignore. His key target was not the thugs who carry out the growing incidents of anti-Semitic attacks, but rather the progressives, the liberals, the socialists — his natural allies — who refuse to treat Jews as a group deserving of the support and protection that they so eagerly extend to other oppressed minorities.
The stereotypes still lurk, poisonously, just below the surface: Jews run everything, influence everything — and yet, simultaneously, are a drag on society. Hollywood is thought to be a Jewish fiefdom — and yet actors have to change their Jewish surnames to get roles.
More issues were raised than resolved: how much or how little does religious observance count? Are all Jews responsible for the actions of the state of Israel? How desirable is separate identity rather than assimilation? But this was a sobering account, pointing to crucial work still to be done.
Never having been there, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of BBC1’s new crime thriller Tokyo Vice (Tuesdays). Dashing young American Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) adores every aspect of the city’s brash nightlife — sexy, corrupt, violent — and secures work as a reporter for the top newspaper. But here he finds a world entirely hidebound by rules and tradition, all innovation quashed, ossified by unthinking deference and absolute obedience to the bosses. In other words, exactly like the Church of England.