Buried in a brief article in The Guardian discussing the current crisis of confidence in the media and the BBC in particular is the following insight which too place during a session on TV drama at this year’s Edinburgh television festival.
Ashley Pharoah, co-creator of Life On Mars, admitted that he had removed racist insults from the mouth of DCI Gene Hunt, after they caused “intakes of breath” among cast and crew at the first readthrough. Pharoah’s explanation was that the success of the series depended on viewers liking Hunt. However, Hunt’s swipes at women and gay people remained intact. And the series editor of BBC1’s Casualty, commenting on newspaper reports that the editorial policy unit had insisted that two Islamist terrorists in a script were changed to animal rights activists, insisted that the switch had been made by the writer, who apparently feared inviting a reaction from extremists.
As Pharoah admitted, it’s “slightly bizarre” that homophobia and sexism should still be considered comic, while racism is not. But it’s also disturbing that a scriptwriter should apparently be too nervous to deal with the modern world’s most virulent form of terrorism. Especially as there might be a case for thinking that animal rights extremists have a greater history of direct action against people who offend them than does al-Qaida.
Animal rights more extreme than al-Qaida?
