The BBC could be 10 times better

The 15 June 2013 edition of The Guardian featured an interview with art critic, Brian Sewell.

After citing Sewell's recent description of the BBC's 'ever-increasing vulgarity and ever-lower intellectual levels,' Michael Hogan asked him if he had 'a particular programme in mind?'

Sewell replied:

"It all conforms to a formula. Even Islam: The Untold Story (C4), to which we gave one of the awards, immediately descended into a travelogue... Religious broadcasting, all broadcasting, ought to be better than that... 

David Suchet's In the Footsteps of St Paul and again, it just turned into a travelogue... Does someone sitting in a room in the 21st century weaving flax tell us anything about St Paul? It's childish and idiotic, but fits that Michael Palin formula which the BBC inflicts on everything...

The channel controllers are of little education and no background. The editors are very technically clever but know nothing about the topic, so they fit everything to this comfortable format. We deserve better. It's patronising rubbish...

All those Simon Schama and David Starkey programmes inevitably turn into walking about and arm-waving. Poor Mary Beard, trundling around the ruins of Rome on a bicycle. Why? These devices even creep into news bulletins: some wretched reporter suddenly emerges from behind a car or tree and walks towards the camera. For God's sake, you have news to communicate. Stand still and tell us what it is. I don't want to be entertained, I want to be informed...

(David) Attenborough does very well because he is just there, talking as the omnipotent voice. He's good at that. That's infinitely more convincing than Brian Cox with his sibilant delivery, trying to be the sex symbol of science...

I can't bear Grayson Perry. He's today's equivalent of Sister Wendy Beckett. You spend all your time looking at his get-up and he's a total distraction from the subject. It may be amusing for some people but you learn nothing about the work, just a lot about Grayson, his motorcycle and his teddy...

When the BBC is covering something serious, it shouldn't be afraid to be serious. It was scandalous when the National Gallery had that miraculous Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition last year. What did the BBC do? Give an hour-long programme to Fiona bloody Bruce. She gushed like a sixth-form girl, questioned nothing and none of us learned a thing... I know many people who groan at the mere mention of Fiona Bruce. 

What Michael Palin does, he does perfectly well but it isn't serious television. It's tomfoolery. He goes to Outer Mongolia and sleeps in a yurt, but you don't learn anything about Outer Mongolia's politics, economics, future or past. You're merely having an adventure holiday by proxy. It's unambitious and complacent.

The BBC plays it far too safe... The BBC clearly think it's good to have programmes presented by people with no knowledge or experience. A few years ago, Titchmarsh hosted the Proms, an absolute insult to anyone who knows or cares about music...

It's terrified of being too intellectual. There's no debate, no critical discourse or differing viewpoints. The BBC has forgotten the tradition of the Third Programme, which was introduced on radio in 1946. It was fundamentally serious: we didn't talk down to you, we talked to each other as we normally would and you'd better hurry along behind. 

I taught history of art in Brixton jail for 10 years and one lesson I learnt very quickly is never talk down to people. If you treat them as equals, you've got them, they're with you. But talk down, they smell it a mile off and hate it. That's what the BBC does all the time."

Hogan: "But the BBC remains a great source of pride to many of us. It's arguably the best broadcaster in the world."

Sewell: "Bollocks! It could be 10 times better. The camera is a wonderful instrument for showing people things. It could work miracles in appreciation of the visual arts but it's never used properly. 

We get Waldemar Januszczak standing in front of a painting, looming at the camera like some kind of North Korean dictator, while you can see two square inches of Van Gogh behind him. He's another walking-about, waving-his-arms merchant and it's not a pretty sight. Same with Alan Yentob. He's not exactly an engaging screen presence, so why is he even there?...

I'm not sure I like The Apprentice but I watch it, fascinated that these awful people even exist."

And so say all of us.

All but the wannabe 'apprentices', that is.