But it'd be an even better point if they made it accurately, wouldn't it?
Hm. Perhaps this is some bit of British life that being an American I just don't understand. Because here in the US, being over-the-top, no matter how inaccurate, seems to be the way to get people to take your point seriously. In fact, if you start getting too accurate (using conditionals like "almost" or "some" instead of absolutes like "all" or "every") people start to think that you really don't have a point at all and are just "whining for attention."
Does it really work the other way around in the UK? Do your points get more respect if you're more accurate about how you go about making them? It would be nice to think that such a place existed outside of academia and courtrooms.
A degree of rhetorical exaggeration is one thing; but making a claim in absolute terms which is blatantly false is likely to get you ignored. "The BBC ignores Wales" is defensibly true as a generality. "The BBC never mentions Wales" when it has two primetime series set there is manifestly wrong.
BBC Wales gets its revenge where it can, whenever there's something mildly interesting on for the rest of the UK they show programmes about a man called Iolo walking up and down hills or a "documentary" drawing tenuous links between minor celebrities and Wales. *shudders
BBC Scotland used to be just as bad; Armando Ianucci used to do a great routine about dying and going to TV heaven, which has things like a fifth season of Blackadder, only to be told at the last moment that "this is except for the dead in Scotland, who have their own heaven." Scottish TV heaven turns out to consist of a fat bald man in a tartan armchair telling you that Scotland is great because we invented golf, we invented tarmac, and we invented television, "even though we're not allowed to f--king watch it."
For these purposes, I recommend Sky, which carries all the regional variations of the BBC and allows you to nimbly sidestep things like RIVER CITY. (Although I'm told it's improved since the mortifying, am-dram early episodes.)
I'm struggling to think of how other areas in the UK, outside London obviously, are/have been definitively 'represented' on national television? 'Brookside'? 'Auf Wiedersehn Pet'?
Perhaps that's the answer though. If Welsh television made more of an effort in commissioning programmes that weren't just exercises in shouting 'WALES!!' in various different ways but were interesting, well-written and entertaining in their own right without just hanging a 'Made in Wales' sticker on them, then they might be more relevant on a national level.
I imagine that the BBC television experience would be pretty shitty if you were from Northern Ireland. It's not as though there's that much coverage of it in any capacity.
Perhaps it's because its the British Broadcasting Commission and it's only part of the UK or something, but I figure that if Northern Ireland featured on mainstream British television in some sort of entertainment slot, more English residents might be aware of the fact that it is not a foreign country.
River City these days is not really any more rubbish than the rest od the soaps on telly. I suppose that counts as an improvement.
How should it go though? Wales has 5% of the UK's population, so should 5% of all programs shown be about Wales? That would get pretty tiring.
As for representing other areas of the UK, there seems to be a documentary about Liverpool on TV roughly 27 times a week at the moment, but then that'll probably stop next year and it won't get mention outside of Boris Johnson. The media gets obsessed over a place and then drops it.
I suppose the question is, do they want more UK programs to be about Wales, or just set in Wales?
MADE in Wales, I believe.
Scotland doesn't meet the quota either - the Beeb get round it by doing stuff like nominally having Film 200x made by BBC Scotland. Despite being made in London with an English presenter.
Bah, typical moaning Welsh/Scots/Irish. Do you hear us residents of Derby complaining that our only BBC coverage, ever, was the awful Letitia Dean sitcom "The Hello Girls" (filmed in London with southern actresses attempting Yorkshire accents)?
It's not an argument anyone's going to win anyway. Were the residents of Edinburgh satisfied that Scotland had been represented on BBC TV when Top Gear did that bit on the most northern island in the UK? Are the residents of small Welsh villages in the western mountains happy when Cardiff shows up on Good Bid, Good Bye?
Hell, you can live in London and have a completely different experience and way of life from someone two miles down the road.
I can think of at least two other Top Gear features in Scotland, just off the top of my head. We have pretty roads.
Do you feel represented then by the BBC in terms of, er, Scottish-road-tv-presence?
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