LAST NIGHT

TV Reviews of Secret History and Airport

"The Cawnpore Massacres" was the sort of programme I didn't think they made any more - a solid historical narrative, complete with cannon blasts and watercolour illustrations of historical ghastliness. They didn't wobble the rostrum camera when they showed you Victorian engravings of the slaughter, and they didn't have actors shouting "Die, British dogs!" in Hindi, but they were certainly unembarrassed by the essentially old-fashioned pedagogical approach of the programme. Two cheers for that, I say, and an extra half a cheer for the even-handed way in which an atrocity had been viewed from both sides of the bloody front line. As every schoolchild knows, the spark that ignited the Indian Mutiny was the sepoys' suspicion that their new cartridges had been greased with animal fats - anathema to both Hindus and Muslims. Secret History (C4) didn't actually tell you whether the rumour was true or not, but it did enlarge upon that complacently Imperial explana-tion (natives and their inexplicable superstitions). In fact, the dissatisfaction of Indian troops had been increasing for years, as their own conditions and pay deteriorated. At least one distinguished British general had resigned over the treatment of his native soldiers, convinced that mutiny was bound to follow.

It did - with a ferocity that was only amplified by the savage reprisals taken by British forces. One of the reasons that so many people died in Cawnpore, both in the siege and the massacre that took place after the garrison surrendered, was that the relief column had been delayed by its thoroughness in "cleansing" the local area. That verb reminded you that there are very few modern atrocities for which the 19th century can't offer a rehearsal. The cruelties of the mutineers were just as appalling - in particular, the lingering butchery of 120 women and children taken prisoner after the Cawnpore massacre. Their grave became the site for a monument to Victorian indignation, one declared off-limits to Indians themselves. It was torn down after Independence, as a sort of marble libel, and its base converted into an impromptu cricket pitch. Secret History's interesting film replaced it with an alternative kind of memorial, one that excluded none of the mourners.

The success of Airport (BBC1), which ended its run last night, demonstrates two things - firstly, that there is an unfathomable enthusiasm for the kind of reality soaps which lightweight cameras have made possible (Airport has been close behind EastEnders in the viewing figures and Driving School, a similar exercise in serial narrative, was one of the few programmes able to climb above it in the BBC's top-20 chart). Secondly, that the British viewing public must be formalists at heart. Because Airport is among the most rigidly predictable programmes on screen. Every week, it seems, Anita will fret over the late arrival of some VIP and eat a snack meal, every week a celebrity is pursued by the Heathrow press pack and every week some luckless mule fails to clear the hurdle of customs. It is deeply, comfortingly, transcendentally boring and, like some types of minimalist music, it induces a state of zen receptiveness in the viewer which gives the tiniest variation from routine a seismic impact. Last night, for example, the dramatic highpoints were a woman having a giddy spell while eating a pizza and a man crashing his car into a concrete barrier (pretty heady stuff for a series in which a crisis usually means a passenger lingering too long in duty-free).

I find its appeal quite mystifying, but I suppose it must have something to do with the way that the absence of distracting incidents compels you to forage for nuances of character (both Driving School and Airport have created popular heroes in the shape, respectively, of Maureen the demon driver, and Jeremy, a long-suffering Aeroflot representative). The fact that most people could find equally diverting personalities next to them in the supermarket queue is evidence of something else - television's alchemical ability to make the ordinary gleam.