Less, please

I apologise in advance for the dyspeptic tone of this post; I promise a more optimistic and positive approach as the year turns.   Here's a list of ten things I would like to see less of in 2011, in reverse order.

10. BBC Political Correspondents

There has always been too many of them, and they all want to be on the air, opining like Nick Robinson.  I don't mind that filling up the News Channel, but on bulletins, the BBC is micro-covering half-hints of policy changes, fall-outs, and general posturing - neither information or analysis. 

9. Anything with Watch in the title

Springwatch, Badgerwatch, Desertwatch, Oddiewatch, Watchdog. Cheap tv, from the people who used to bring you Blue Planet

8. Take That

The BBC and ITV are equally guilty. 

7. Formulaic TV News graphics

I mean those where the reporter stands next to a bank, house, ship, road - and hey presto, stats about interest rates, mortgages, exports and deaths appear by tv magic.  Out of perspective, and often difficult to read.  In a world where these is now genuine invention in visualising stats on the web, this cliche should be banned.

6. Scottish folk singers in country houses

The errant Richard Klein, Controller of BBC4, refuses to show decent classical music apart from the Proms, despite the admonitions of the BBC Trust, and the fact that the BBC has all those orchestras. Instead he takes refuge in regular repeats of Gaelic sessions, Folk Britannia and lumpen bits of the Old Grey Whistle Test.  A disgrace, when Sky Arts is doing so much more with so much less.

5. Nigel Slater

His books are great, Toast was brilliant, the recipes are engaging, but the camp close-ups of him chewing and simpering on his current BBC1 series say it's time for a rest.  Plus I cannot forgive him for cooking four chicken breasts on screen just to create "leftovers". 

4. Reporters at closed airports

Yes, just far enough away from the terminal for the wide shot, so that they have to ring up like everyone else for information about flights, or get fed copy from London.  Never first with the "latest".  You get more detail out of one answer from Simon Calder in the studio.  Don't tell me to go to your website, either.  That's useless too. 

3. Cooking competitions

We're missing out on showing real technique, in favour of the spurious drama of cooking against a clock and a "vote".  No wonder Nigel just cooks chicken breasts.

2. Eastenders

Forced to watch by relatives over the festive break, I remain of the view that this is the single most important reason for the BBC's failure to connect with the wider UK.  It's miserable stuff.  Free from humour, aspiration, hope - and plummeting into tawdry, tabloid plotlines.  I'd make Thommo sit down in front of a full week's episodes and sort it out, or tell me how it meets Putting Quality First.

1. Alan Hansen's eyebrows

The laziest pundit on the telly. The quality of his analysis is now woeful - especially when compared to that offered by the doyennes of Fleet Street, filed within moments of the final whistle.  There has to be more to talk about than who'll win the Premiership.   I suspect one HD close-up of Alan will sort his exit - focus on where the perma-tan meets the application of Just For Men (Moustache, Beard and Sideburns gel). Scarier than Gordon Ramsay's surgical bandana.