Bland. Boring. Complacent

'The BBC fails to catch the enthusiasm of viewers. Does its chairman think Asian teenagers can't see trash for what it is?'

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BBC chairman tries to calm 'hijack' row

Podium - Gavyn Davies: Our critics are just trying to hijack our services

Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC board of governors, has told us that the people who criticise the BBC for dumbing down are "southern, white, middle class and well educated". Davies, who was educated at St John's College, Cambridge and is a multi-millionaire former partner of Goldman Sachs investment bank, might have felt a little embarrassment as he suggested that the well-educated middle class just cannot understand the extraordinary qualities of the BBC. What does he think he and his fellow executives are? Horny-handed sons of toil to a man?

And Davies is on shaky ground in suggesting that complaints about the BBC stem only from snobbery. Because although it may be mainly the white, middle-class whingers who get heard around west London, does it therefore follow that northern or black or young or working-class viewers must all be absolutely delighted with what the BBC puts out?

Hardly. The truth is that the BBC is failing to catch the enthusiasm of too many of its viewers. It doesn't cater well for those who are utterly disaffected with party politics or for those who are fascinated by the whole process. It doesn't delight either those who can hum the prelude to Parsifal or those who prefer So Solid Crew. To take Gavyn Davies's own exercise in contrasts, the BBC doesn't excite either the member of the House of Lords or the "Asian teenager on the streets of Leicester". Or does Mr Davies think that Asian teenagers can't see trash for what it is?

Resolutely and carefully, for as long as I can remember, BBC television has been not so much dumbing down as watering down its offerings. Or, to switch metaphors, it has become a bit of a doughnut, all bland and sugary, but with nothing solid in the centre. No one is to be offended, no one is to be challenged, no one is to struggle. Easy, easy, easy does it.

Take some of the BBC's flagship new projects. A drama series called Rescue Me began on BBC1 a week ago. It's meant to be the belated British answer to Sex and the City or Ally McBeal. You can almost see the producers getting out a vast blender and tipping in all the familiar ingredients – white thirtysomething professional, problems in her love life, borderline neurotic.

But if you compare it to those American series, you quickly realise that cooking by formula is not a route to great television. As everything that is familiar is put in, and everything that is unexpected is taken out, the result is a confection of extraordinary blandness that wants to please everyone and ends up interesting no one. Well-meaning? Yes. Worth watching? No.

Or take the history series that is beginning this Friday. Again, you can see the BBC executives clustering eagerly around the blender. Half a pound of Survivor, a teaspoon of The 1900 House, a dash of Simon Schama – and what have you got? The Trench! A programme where ordinary people pretend to re-enact the horrors and hardships of the trenches – though, as critics have pointed out, without dysentery, disability and death to contend with, the whole exercise is howlingly absurd. Here it is, coming to your screens tomorrow, a prime example of the airy weightlessness that passes for serious television in Britain now.

Those are just a couple of the most proudly promoted projects on the BBC right now. But you only have to scan your schedules to see what fills up the gaps: crime shows based on CCTV footage of robbers in shops; documentaries about saving animals; formulaic games shows, and more gardening and DIY programmes than you can shake your remote control at.

I'm not saying there aren't good programmes or good directors or good ideas on the BBC any more. There are. There are. But so often the BBC seems to be stymied by its desire to appeal to the middle ground rather than to any audiences that are perceived as fringe or minority.

Sure, it doesn't reflect the taste of what is sometimes still called the élite. As shown in Gavyn Davies's own words, nothing embarrasses middle-class media executives more than pushing anything that looks middle-class. The BBC would hate to be seen to be promoting the values of the operagoers and the poetry readers – even if by classing these as minority tastes and farming them out to the digital channels they are denying other people access to great art. And it's only by increased access that such art will cease to be élitist.

But, equally, the BBC doesn't reflect what is going on in other groups that are seen as fringe or minority. As with the élite, so with the underclass. All the dramas that are produced now tend to be set in a certain small social scene. Where do we see the dramas of the asylum-seekers, the homeless, the families living on benefits? The occasional documentary maker might foray out to these groups, but there is a whole layer of experience, of living close to the edge in this brave new Britain, that is hardly ever reflected.

And when it comes to political debate, the BBC is failing us profoundly. We are living in explosive times. In newspapers and magazines and books, as well as pressure groups and public debates, people are trying to make sense of a changing world. Global instabilities and inequalities are pressing hard on our apparently stable society. Don't tell me that Asian teenagers on the streets of Leicester aren't following the international situation with interest, if not passion. Don't tell me that they are any less likely than a member of the House of Lords to be frustrated by what the BBC is putting out.

The BBC is currently conducting a review of its political programming. From leaks so far, it appears that it is simply looking for more entertaining ways of inviting people into the cosy Westminster village. There has been talk of a UK version of The West Wing, for instance – yet another example of the BBC's blender mentality.

But rather than looking over their shoulders to the blandness of American political programming, perhaps the BBC should look somewhere rather different. There are enough popular sites on the internet, such as Indymedia and Common Dreams, that gather together a range of views and analysis of international developments, to suggest that people who aren't getting what they want from television will look elsewhere.

There was a brief moment – after violence erupted in Genoa – when people called anti-capitalists were fashionable on the BBC. Since then, politics has returned solidly to the politicians, and the executives are wondering why people are switching off. But programmes that allowed dissenting voices to be heard are far more likely to bring people back into the debate than those programmes, like Tuesday's Newsnight, where two politicians sit down for a quiet after-dinner discussion of the speech of the leader of their own party.

But Gavyn Davies wouldn't like you to get angry. Rather, you should settle down happily in front of Michael Parkinson going out at prime time this Saturday, with television's best moments of 2001 in front of a star-studded audience. That's the BBC we know and must try to love. It's the bland celebrating the bland.

n.walter@btinternet.com