At school in the 1970s, television was a special occasion.
There was one television set per school, it was the size of a wardrobe and it had to be wheeled in specially by the janitor. To make matters worse, there were only three programmes: one on basket weaving, one on high-rise living and one on Isambard Kingdom Brunel. They were all horribly dull but at least it meant you didn't have to do any proper lessons for half an hour or so.
Those old 1970s programmes were the first thing I thought of when The Village (BBC One, Sunday, 9pm) started this week. The aim of the series was to tell the story of one family but also the story of an entire century. It was earnest, it was dull, but, worst of all, it was good for us.
The first episode was set in 1914 and here are two facts the programme taught us about that year. One: all the men 100 years ago were drunk and useless. Two: all the women were brave and feisty.
The leading man was John Middleton, played by John Simm and, like all men 100 years ago, he was horrible. He slurped his food, he drank heavily and he got angry at everything. Tables, chairs, even swimming. "Swimming!" he yelled. "Swimming!"
Putting up with all this was his wife Grace, played by Maxine Peake, who was, like all women 100 years ago, downtrodden yet somehow beautiful. Wherever she went, a violinist played to remind us of her nobility.
The other main female character, Martha Lane (Charlie Murphy), was exactly the same. Within seconds of arriving in the village, she was adopting Catherine Cookson cover poses and speaking, like a children's encyclopedia, about women's rights.
The writer Christopher Booker once said there were only seven plots, but in this kind of television, there is only one: woman arrives in town and questions the male hegemony while having nice hair.
In many ways, it is such a pity that The Village should have fallen into this trap because it is a large and foreseeable trap – as large and foreseeable as the valley the programme is set in – and the ambition of the series is commendable.
But the ambition is spoiled by the fact we are taken up so many familiar narrative grooves, the worst of which was the affair between the eldest Middleton son, Joe, and Caro, the daughter up at the big house. It was the usual story: posh flesh quivering at the sight of poor flesh.
Caro's family was also to blame for most of the Ladybird facts-for-kids that littered the show (Caro's dog, for instance, was German, a dachshund, and it was stoned by kids as a traitor when war broke out). Most of the characters spouted these facts while pretending to have conversations.
It would have been boring had I been forced to watch it on a TV the size of wardrobe in a stuffy classroom in the 1970s and, sadly for a programme that is trying so hard to be sweeping and ambitious and good, it is just as boring now.
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