Stephen Graham is, I hope you agree, one of our finest actors. I adore his work and when YouTube offered an interview he did on ITV’s This Morning, I bit their hand off, figuratively at least. Graham, along with co-star Ashley Walters, appeared on the show to plug the new TV show Adolescence, a powerful story about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his female classmate. What I saw shocked me. Not just the story, which appears harrowing enough in itself, but the light-hearted and frivolous way in which the interview was conducted. To say the least, it was jarring.
The preview, as you can see here, is harrowing. It appears to be one of those shows that I think I should watch but fear it could be too upsetting. Perhaps, seeing Graham and Walters talking about it would persuade me to do so. It’s a powerful story, not based on a single true story, but centred around the knife-crime epidemic in the UK.
Obviously, I know about This Morning. It’s a lightweight daily entertainment show which, according to wikipedia (so it must be true), “features a variety of news, showbiz, fashion, health and beauty, lifestyle, home and garden, food, tech, live phone-ins, and competitions.” It’s been running since 1988 and I have seen excerpts when I was in a previous life visiting elderly and brain-injured people in various settings like care homes. Serious journalism it ain’t. A “story about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his female classmate” would be a laughter-free area, right? If only.
The presenters, Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond, started off well enough, explaining the plot-lines and praising the acting but, at some point, it turned into knockabout comedy. The only sound in our house when I watched was that of my jaw hitting the floor. I can understand the difficulties for a TV show, swinging from one item to another at breakneck pace, but this was just crass. You can watch it here.
I know little about O’Leary, having never seen shows like the X Factor he presented, and perhaps only slightly more about Hammond whose shtick, from what I can tell, is to laugh a lot. Not exactly Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Wark on the interviewing stakes, I know, but surely there is a time and a place, an acknowledgement that some things just require a little more decorum. I like to think I have a decent sense of humour but this was, frankly, mad.
But maybe it’s me. For all I know, this is the normal way of things on This Morning? Essentially, light-hearted brainless TV aimed at people – and I am not trying to be rude, insulting or patronising (but I suspect I am being all three) – with too much time on their hands. It felt as if the presenters were busking, making it up as they went along, and as the laughing and giggling intensified, I kept thinking, “mate, this isn’t a funny subject.”
I surfed the internet to see if there had been complaints about the show. I found nothing. So, it was me after all, unless I was the only person in the land who watched the show? Maybe this is the new normal, where gruesome stories don’t just compete for airtime with showbiz trivia, they share it? And maybe it’s me who’s out of touch with the modern world and if you can’t have a belly laugh while talking about a story of murder, then frankly when can you?
