Auntie's new politics

It's not dumbed down, and Jeremy Vine doesn't wear a jumper. But is the new BBC politics show different enough? David Lister has an exclusive preview

The BBC's successor to On the Record starts next Sunday and comes with grim forebodings. Its very title, The Politics Show with Jeremy Vine, seems to imply in the word "show" that the governance of Britain is now viewed as show business. The searching set-piece interview that was at the centre of On the Record under the inquisitorial stewardship of John Humphrys would be no more; and the aim was to bring in that elusive "new audience", no doubt by means of snazzy graphics and a few bars of rock music. Why, The Guardian even managed to confuse the roles of the new show's ubiquitous presenter, Jeremy Vine, publishing a publicity shot of him in a sweater for his Radio 2 show and claiming that this was the laid-back image of the new Politics Show.

Well, there is a bit of boogie piano in the signature tune of the new show, and the studio design is studiously, almost desperately, relaxed and "accessible", with purple sofas, purple flowers, irises and lilies, a grey mock-marble background, a live shot of London in the background from a rooftop camera, and a coffee table replacing the Humphrys interrogation desk. It's going to be living-room chat, not eyeball-to-eyeball interrogation. But Jeremy Vine, in dark suit and open-necked shirt, does not wear a jumper. Indeed, I can reveal that he wears spectacles for his new show, a donnish look that he did not even attempt on Newsnight. No one chooses to wear spectacles to dumb down; people wear them to impress with their sagacity – at least, we spectacles-wearers like to think so.

I watched the final pilot for The Politics Show and saw Vine and the team go through their paces. What was immediately clear was that there had been two basic misconceptions about the programme. It is not aimed at youth; a separate politics programme is, and it is still in development. The second misconception was that the set-piece interview had been removed. Not so. The setting may be more relaxed, but as Newsnight-watchers know, Vine can grill with the best of them, and there is no noticeable change in his perspicacity here. What there is, as he told me afterward, is a change in his philosophy toward interviewing. "I am certainly not going to be gentler or more cuddly," he said. "But there's a change in interviewing generally at the moment, a move away from the idea that if you really hammer the person, they will move away from their position."

Mr Paxman, are you keeping up?

But if the new show keeps the On the Record staples of interview and investigation (as it was always likely to do, with several On the Record personnel behind the cameras and an editor, James Stephenson, who used to work on Newsnight), there are startling differences, too.

The first came with Vine's first words. Standing and then walking toward the camera (standing, of course, is the new sitting in news and current affairs), he announced: "UN inspectors say the weapons they found are obsolete. Mind you, they were in the British army camp at the time." As you rub your eyes, he is on to the second '"newsflash". "The Prime Minister was heckled by an anti-war protester while making a speech about public services. Clare Short later apologised for her outburst."

Jokes at the top of the programme? It seems the Have I Got News for You style of political analysis is spreading across the corporation's output. Only thing is, HIGNFY is a comedy programme. Still, the jokes are harmless enough (though the grotesque drawing of Clare Short in a brief cartoon at the end of the show almost gives grounds for a court case). Comedy routine over, Vine sits down and looks relieved to be through with the jokes and the walking-about.

He says what's coming up on the show: an investigation of the British Olympics bid and strange government machinations behind the scenes; a piece from the former inspector of schools Chris Woodhead and a chance for viewers to quiz him; and "later in the programme we'll have the politics that matter where you live."

In those last two innovations – viewers e-mailing and text-messaging their questions to the show's guest, and the regional opt-out for a hefty 20 minutes of local political programming – lies the heart of the new programme. Vine continually addresses the viewer as "you" in a way that Humphrys never did. In the trailer for the programme, he says it shows "the political picture from Downing Street to your street". Vine told me afterward that he saw the direct approach to the viewer as '"crucial". Even when the show has finished on BBC1, it continues for 15 minutes on the web and on interactive TV while Vine puts more viewers' questions to the principal guest. It seems to work. Viewers' questions to Woodhead grasp the real parental concerns and, asked by Vine, are short and direct and give him the chance for supplementaries. Whether the regional opt-outs – a Greg-Dyke-approved result of the massive political-programming think-in at the corporation – unleash a hunger for community involvement or make viewers switch off remains to be seen. It's far from proven that the BBC is correct in assuming that people are as interested in local politics as in the decision-makers at Westminster, let alone more interested.

The Politics Show seems to half-know that. Its editor, James Stephenson, tells me, while discussing the design of the set: "We have moved away from Westminster political imagery in terms of the look of the programme, but not the content." The pilot quite rightly discusses the Prime Minister's latest remarks on Iraq (The Independent on Sunday's political correspondent, Jo Dillon, is the guest for that item). And an interview is scheduled with a shadow minister about Woodhead's remarks. Stephenson promises top-level ministerial interviews, even though half the programme will always be removed from Westminster.

He says: "The remit is to refresh the serious end of political coverage. It's looking again at how you make big serious political coverage as accessible as possible." His and the BBC's conviction that the non-Westminster thrust of the show is vital is sledgehammered home from time to time. Introducing one item, Vine says: "Now, do we have to depend on our politicians for every viewpoint? Of course not." Sceptics may fear that that is a link to a rock star, but in fact it is a link to a professor of philosophy. Again, the fears of dumbing-down are wide of the mark.

The show's new directions seem worthy experiments, even if the obsession with inclusiveness drives the programme at times to the point of paranoia. After the Woodhead item, Vine assures the viewers: "He was only the chief inspector of schools for England, but he says his remarks hold for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, too."

There are bigger questions, of course, about the BBC's philosophy and its fears about conventional political programmes being inaccessible. Last Saturday night, I watched a riveting programme called Great Political Mistakes. It was about Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax and included interviews with all the key ministers and leading civil servants. It was on BBC4. I doubt such a programme would be transmitted on BBC1 now, just as I doubt many people saw it on BBC4.

The changes in the BBC's philosophy and attitude to political programming go much deeper than On the Record being succeeded by The Politics Show, which contrary to reports is neither dumbed down nor youth-oriented. In fact, it's not so very different from its venerable predecessor.