December 4, 2023 - 6:00pm
On Saturday evening the BBC screened the second of three Doctor Who specials to be aired this year. After last week’s grating, clunky trans propaganda, it was time for some historically implausible colour-blind casting, with Isaac Newton portrayed by the British-Indian actor Nathaniel Curtis. Both episodes have sparked a good deal of understandable eye-rolling and irritation, with critics noting that New Who shed about three million viewers during Jodie Whittaker’s tenure, when a series already tending towards smugness became insufferably self-righteous.
There is little left to be said about the suffocating Leftish conformity that afflicts British television. A more important and interesting question is what the future holds. For now, the BBC and Channel 4 coddle many creatives who would struggle in a genuine marketplace. But that is probably coming to an end. In 2027, the BBC will face its Charter renewal and just this week Rishi Sunak warned the organisation to “be realistic” about what families could afford.
It may be that a Labour government with a comfortable majority chooses to extend the lifespan of the licence fee in its current form. There is even the faint possibility that BBC chiefs decide to course-correct on their own initiative, ending the progressive agitprop in drama and children’s programming, and make a genuine effort to build bridges with conservative-minded people.
My own suspicion is that both these outcomes are unlikely. The BBC’s bias problem is institutional, not least because the sections of society from which the BBC recruits are overwhelmingly to the Left and incapable of understanding or practising impartiality in the old sense. And even if a Prime Minister Starmer wanted to continue the licence fee, the cultural and technological trends point towards it having come to the end of its life.
For good or ill, many people of my generation and below barely watch scheduled television, and are now very used to the subscription model. I do rather regret this in some ways: although I am a strong critic of the contemporary BBC, I retain a certain sentimental attachment to the organisation as it was, and to the old mass culture of which it was an important part, which persisted until the early years of this century but is now fading quickly. The vanishing of event television and the fragmentation of audiences is a significant barrier to the renewal of a cohesive national culture.
Sadly, mainstream channels’ factual programming is now at a nadir, with stringent political imperatives and strictly-policed taboos crippling their ability to make rigorous documentaries. The lowering of technological barriers to market entry mean that supposed amateurs, often with limited resources, are making informative, well-researched programmes with high production values that are much more enlightening and thoughtful than anything on the legacy channels.
It’s very hard to know what the visual entertainment landscape will look like in a decade or two’s time. But one thing is pretty certain: those who prefer their drama unencumbered by political lectures will almost certainly be able to avoid funding such lectures if they so wish. Unfortunately, that could mark the beginning of the end for the BBC.
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SubscribeMore grotesque, Orwellian lies from the BBC and the current left. The ascription to Newton of Afro-Caribbean heritage is waved through with a “what does it matter?” whilst if anyone of conspicuously European ethnicity should so much as sport a sombrero or a fez, why that’s “cultural appropriation” and banned. We are subject, therefore, to a miserable double standard operated without a scintilla of shame; and it is spuriously justified by appeals to skewed, fake history and assumptions of collective, inherited “guilt”. Worse, it denies to anyone of European origin or descent the natural and necessary pride they should take in their ancestral culture; a culture which served as the seedbed of Enlightenment and progress in the modern world. In short, the plain, awkward, salient fact being squashed here, is that Newton was a white Englishman and that it was the particular culture of his people which enabled him to put his extraordinary mind to world transforming use. Of course, the vicious left – speaking with forked tongue as usual – actually hates Newton and hates the Enlightenment; and you can bet your bottom dollar that were they arraigning the great man as the begetter of Blake’s “dark, Satanic mills” he’d change his pigmentation back in the twinkling of an eye.
Yes. The 2010 Equality laws which created a new legal race hierarchy (non white victim groups being accorded higher privilege over and superiority to the oppressor whites) have mutated like a virus in the cultural and academic world, spreading uncontrollably. White males are depicted as inherently evil (see Chevalier) and non whites as superior moral beings. Hence the paralysis in news coverage of Hamas, BLM, EU, migration, Islamism. Fear of social exclusion as a terf, racist, or god forbid brexiteer has determined a rigid North Korean style psychological conformity/non diversity groupthink in London Media. Think Beijing 68 and Red Guards. All cultural production – especially at the BBC – conforms to and serves this now deranged CRT like State-induced ideology. This mission is doing immense unfathomable harm to both their so called victim groups and our communal bonds. But it not policed and it is getting stronger.
Agreed. The thing is, though, although this is superficially racist against white people, on a deeper level it’s actually even more profoundly racist – certainly patronising at the very least – to non-whites. Because isn’t this basically saying: white people should be better than this, we should rise above such petty things as pride in our race or culture or history? Whereas non-white cannot rise above it, they must have their nationalism and their racial identities and can’t be expected to compromise on them at all. I’m not saying this is good for white people, but in many ways it’s no better – arguably worse – for everyone.
100%. It is a grotesque twisted pyschological disorder more than a coherent or respectful ideology. Utterly patronising toward all the supposed needy Victim Groups who – poor dears – need the (actually Neo Imperialist) Progressive White Blairite Legal Saviours to protect them from Patriarchal White Evil and our whole History. The way this State driven law on the pigmentation of our skins has mutated and gone so rogue-crazy in the world of culture – casting all non white males as inherently virtuous and morally superior irrespective of actual deeds – will appall and fascinate our children…if the Red Guards and this mania is defeated. An impossible task if its patrons – the Labour Progressives – take power and embed authoritarian Me Not We identitarianism deeper into our still tolerant society.
Agree. My partner is black/mixed race and is sick to death of being patronised and categorised. This has become an obsession over the last few years with the liberal elite.
Black people are not one homogeneous group, that think the same, act the same and want the same.
Not surprisingly, my partner has faced verbal racial abuse several times recently Something that hadn’t happened for a long, long time. Things are moving in the wrong direction Thanks to the so called “anti racists”
Your partner should get used to abuse. As a member of the new privileged class, it’s only natural that the underclass should show its resentment. It is not nice, but it is ever thus.
The “progressive” identitarian mindset afflicting Dr Who is possibly even worse than you realise, Simon. It now borders on self-parody.
In the short trailer for the 60th anniversary “specials” (first shown on Children In Need), the iconic villain Davros is portrayed as basically human and in possession of two working legs. “Interesting”, I thought, “perhaps in an upcoming episode they’ll address how he came to be disfigured and reliant on a Dalek-style chassis for mobility”.
But no: show-runner/writer Russell T Davies is on record as saying that the changes have been made for fear that viewers would associate wheelchair users with “being evil”. According to him, “there’s a very long tradition of this”.
I am forcefully reminded of the saying, “If you can hear the whistle, you are the dog”.
That’s nothing. Apparently in the latest episode an alien didn’t identify as a she or he. It identified as non-binary. Th Dr apparently had to apologise for misgendering it. Cringe worthy embarrassment.
It was voiced by the Godawful Margoyles woman, so what else can we expect?
Yes, I saw that, too. You’re right, it’s insufferable, but I think the high-handed ret-conning of established characters for such stupid reasons is much worse.
Also, Russell T Davies doesn’t understand ‘show, don’t tell’, hence all the characters in that first episode constantly telling each other how brave, beautiful, and brilliant Rose was, just in case us thicko viewers couldn’t see how special she was.
Commenting here is all over the place sometimes. When I originally tried to post the comment above, I got a series of red, tech-ese ‘Captcha validation failure’ error messages, despite being logged in. After refreshing the page, submission was successful, but the post was flagged as ‘Awaiting approval’. When I checked back an hour later, it had disappeared, and wasn’t even showing up in My Account – Comments. Obviously, what I’d said was so important that I had to post it again, and now the bl00dy thing is here twice (or was, until I turned the duplicate into this whinge, after which no doubt the original will disappear again!).
It’s a great comment. Thanks for taking the time and making the effort.
The BBC is dead. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-Channel.
However, while it continues to be funded by the taxpayer, it will plod along in its zombie way, casting shade where there once was light, fomenting division, antagonising the public with its patronising nonsense.
The only way they will get the message is if the public rise up, a la the poll tax, and refuse to pay any longer for this utter dog mess of an organisation.
I have recently cancelled my licence and I would urge everyone of all persuasions and none to do the same. The endless preaching during entertainment is bad enough, but I draw the line at funding the lies of BBC News.
They won’t get another penny from me, and it’s not as if I’m even missing out, there is literally nothing on there worth watching anymore.
I’ve not paid for the BEEB for years and haven’t missed it a bit. Anything semi-decent goes to dvd in any case, but even that is usually vastly overrated when I finally get to watch it.
Drop the dead donkey – you know it makes sense.
Goes to DVD? Have we gone through a time warp? Is it 2005?
I still buy box sets. Succession, I can highly recommend.
“there is literally nothing on there worth watching anymore”
That is why they changed the law to require watching anything ‘live’ to require a TV licence.
Note to companies. When nobody wants to buy your brand of product just get the Govt to change the law to require you to get a share when any similar product is bought.
Hear hear! Very well said. It needs many more to follow our example.
Pub?
Cancelled mine 6 months ago. Good riddance. Was surprised at how little interest they took in the matter TBH, just one letter and ‘we’ll check up with you again in a year’.
I’m currently waiting to see if they send the goons round. If they do, I suppose I’ll cough up. Deeply resent doing so as I watch commercial channels or stream things.
I cancelled 20 years ago. Get those silly letters which I put in the bin. Never had anybody around.
It’s all so wearyingly predictable.
Colour-blind casting for is for woke reasons, not artistic ones. It’s almost a challenge to the audience …. We’re just supposed not to notice.
Yet cast Damian Lewis as Nelson Mandela and they’d notice soon enough.
As with all multicultural edicts, it is a one-way street. If you notice a black actor in a traditionally white role – say Hamlet – then you’re a bigot. If a white actor is cast in a role traditionally associated with a person of colour then it is cultural appropriation.
Maureen Lipman criticised the casting of Helen Mirren to play Golda Meir with accusations of ‘Jewface’. Yet if anyone criticised a jewish actress for playing a gentile then they’d immediately be cancelled for anti-semitism.
Eddie Redmayne playing a trans character was supposedly “Regressive, Reductive and Harmful”, a criticism he felt compelled to agree with, lest it damage his career. Gay roles played by straight actors receive similar opprobrium.
The end goal, presumably, is that actors can only play characters that match their own identity-groupings … or some such twaddle.
I await the news that Sir Anthony Hopkins, following a twitter storm accusing him of anthropophagiophobia, is returning his Oscar and going on a media apology tour, for having cruelly stolen a part that should have gone to a genuine cannibal mass murderer.
Apropos your last paragraph; it could be said the Beeb are biting their noses off to spite their faces.
Absolutely right. The BBC chooses to bite their noses off to spite their face again and again
BBC news and current affairs is nakedly hostile to the Govt that holds the purse strings. Any sense of impartiality has gone.
They have been openly disdainful of the choices of over half the electorate – sneering at any who don’t fall in with the BBC approved view of the world.
BBC programming in general has decided that older viewers should be ignored – all in a vain attempt to chase a younger audience, none of whom would ever think to spend an evening in watching 2 terrestrial channels.
They’ve taken long running and much loved series – Dr Who being a good example – and remade them as activist propaganda.
BBC Drama has decided to rewrite the classics by inserting C21st liberal agenda issues into adaptations of 18th and 19th century literature.
Each one of those decisions has actively discouraged previously loyal viewers.
Issues that chime with BBC virtue projection, such as Climate, Austerity or most recently with Covid or BLM stories, are presented with no balance, no counter-narrative. Simple propaganda is enough.
When a national broadcaster fails to give viewers accurate and impartial information, when it distorts the debate to fit in with its own narrow worldview, then that damages democracy. There is no more intellectually bereft argument than “both sides think its biased which means they must be doing a good job”. But every time the BBC comes under fire for their bias, some unctuous BBC Corporate spokesperson is wheeled onto a show to “laugh off” such criticism by making precisely that case.
The BBC has a charter obligation to provide balanced and impartial news and comment. It no longer comes even close to achieving that.
I am a great supporter of “the idea” of the BBC. To have TV & Radio channels entirely free from advertiser or owner-led interference, supported by licence fee payers, that can produce quality programmes without having to pander to lowest common denominator tastes to chase viewing figures, was (and should still be) what made it one of the great British institutions.
However, if the BBC fails to meet its charter obligations then it gives up the right to its funding. If they want to continue receiving state funding then the BBC needs to face up to this and be brave enough to change.
Auntie needs to grow some balls!
Well, i’m glad i replied to your original post, if it acted as a prompt to that comprehensive and descriptive account of the Beeb’s failings!
Hah! Apologies for the overshare Steve!
I rarely pass up an opportunity to vent my spleen about an institution that was once the pride of Britain and is now something that embarrasses us.
You have expessed perfectly my own feelings about the current BBC. Have saved your comment so I can quote it to the Beeb when they start pestering me to renew my licence.
So well put.
I do find your comment about Maureen Lipman criticizing the casting of Helen Mirren as Golda Meir with accusations of “jewface” as fascinating, especially since I would assume that with a surname such as Lipman, Lipman is probably jewish. That strikes me as completely and totally racist and stereotyping (a la Shiloch) as it assumes that Jews have a specific look that is very different from gentiles, despite the two groups being “white” aand basically indistinguishable. Let’s be honest, I fail to see that Gal Godot, Natalie Portman or Bar Refaeli looking stereotypically Jewish whatever that might mean.
You’ve obviously not been following the current wearisome debate about Leonard Bernstein’s nose.
“It’s almost a challenge to the audience …. We’re just supposed not to notice”
I think white people are meant to be provoked and simultaneously put down. Casting in advertising has now got to the point where it seems the objective is to bait – reading many comments on the subject it appears to be a successful ploy.
Apparently all of us who thought that acting was, essentially, pretending to be someone else, will now have to think again.
If straight white roles were limited to straight white actors the industry really would be in trouble
Precisely. I see no movement to discredit the life’s work of many actors from previous generations who were, in their private lives, ‘light in the loafers’.
I followed the link in the article and discovered the next Dr Who is a Rwandan queer (his words) who is very critical of Suella Braverman. What a long way we have come!
And we can only wonder how much further we have to go…..
Not much longer now.
Maybe Suella Braverman can play an evil alien in the show.
Only if she put on white face.
“But one thing is pretty certain: those who prefer their drama unencumbered by political lectures will almost certainly be able to avoid funding such lectures if they so wish.”
Here’s my prediction, and it won’t be popular with Unherd readers: the further advance of technology, and continued globalization, will deprive an ever-increasing percentage of the population of meaningful work. Those people will rely on State benefits for survival. Consequently, the power of the State will increase and will be felt in every aspect of life, not least in which views are permitted to be expressed in the entertainment industry, whether in the public or private sectors.
Our only way out of this impasse, imo, is a huge social-economic disruption, such as a major war directly affecting Western countries, or financial crisis like the Great Depression. Only then will the “reset” button be pressed and we can gradually climb out of our current hole. It will not be an easy process.
Yes, I know, I’m in a cheerful mood today.
That is plausible, though I am not clear how all these state benefits will be paid for if AI destroys rather than creates employment. It seems unlikely that AI could pay for itself, or be economically viable, if employment levels, and by implication the purchasing power of the market, contracted as a result of AI. That’s not what happened to employment levels (in total at least) in response to previous technological improvements. As it is, government debt levels in the West are arguably unsustainably high already, given upward pressure from Net Zero and an aging population. It’s hard to see how state benefits could be extended much further.
A war? Wouldn’t that give the state a perfect reason to bring in extreme restrictions on individual liberty?
If covid is any example, that is exactly what they’ll do, and the majority will go along with it
financial crisis around the corner
The presumption has always been that WW3 would be nuclear and over in an afternoon. However I feel it would suit the cabal’s interest to keep it traditional, attritional and on top of the vaccine slaughter a perfectly logical advance of the depopulation agenda. As the father of a 15 year old boy, sensitive and artistic, this effing terrifies me.
“Vaccine slaughter”?
Okay, then. Bioweapon mass murder.
Seriously? I (perhaps naively) assumed that the fact that the “great dying” of the vaccinated hasn’t materialised, and that in fact functionally nobody has died as a result of the COVID vaccines, might have persuaded the anti-vax ultras that the vaccines were not part of a heinous plot to reduce world population.
Try to dissuade your 15 yo from going to university.
There is another way out of the impasse: close half the universities and dedicate the rest to STEM. We’ll always need engineers and plumbers. We don’t need 350k unemployable arts graduates every year.
Who will man the coffee shops, the bars, MacDonald’s…etc if we don’t have arts majors?
The same people -but without the unsupportable debt.
Well I think a major financial crisis is a racing certainty and world war highly probable. Still either or both might be better than the picture you paint
If there is a financial crisis, it will flow from the fact that during COVID, the world’s governments threw money around like confetti.
I think it will be apt to advise or remind people that, if you do not watch terrestrial TV ‘live’ or use iPlayer, you can cancel your licence fee.
Denude them of funds.
Here in Australia, the government pays for the national broadcaster from consolidated revenue. It seems like the better system to me. I never really understood why Britain had a licence fee.
In Canada the National Broadcaster CBC is funded by
the Government’ (taxpayers). The CBC is more like the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party. Since they started funding newspapers with taxpayer money (officially so we retainindependent’ newspapers), what constitutes Journalism has decreased.How do you do that??
Funnily enough, in Australia, the Liberal Party is the more right-wing of the two major parties.
Good article, very timely.
Personally, I don’t object to the existence of left-wing and woke propaganda. People are entitled to their views, after all.
What I object to in principle is when such propaganda is delivered through a supposedly impartial and objective BBC. Any way you look at it, the organisation as a whole has a protected status and is firmly part of the establishment.
But what I object to even more is how utterly crass and simplistic the propaganda is. Whoever dreams it up is clearly underestimating the intelligence of the audience. It’s actually embarrassing, like listening to an insufferably smug sixth-form activist patiently lecturing his racist uncle at a family get-together. A genuinely intelligent attempt to subvert and influence would be in some sense admirable. But this just insults our intelligence with its ridiculous posturing over race and gender, and its confected obsession with trans people. And dear God, remembering the Brexit debate….
I live in hope that it will sort itself, because there are so many alternative sources of information now out there. People will realise that the BBC are politically immature lying children, and simply give up on them. We can now see for ourselves on Twitter and blogs and youtube channels that “mainly peaceful” demonstrations involve favoured groups attacking the police and violently-expressed antisemitism; and that having certain protected characteristics (skin colour other than white, female sex, homosexuality, a belief that you are in fact the sex you are not, Islamic religion) gets you a favoured hearing.
I would regretfully agree so far as television is concerned (I don’t watch it, so perhaps that’s why). What about radio though? Lots of people who never switch on the telly listen to that all the time – BBC local radio in particular is still genuinely popular (perhaps because it is generally far more upbeat than national programming, also for things like football and cricket coverage). So are Radio 1 and Radio 2. Of the highbrow offerings while Radio 4 is often toe-curlingly annoying, it has some wonderful programmes (Crossing Continents, for instance, or From our Own Correspondent). Radio 3 is also often fantastic – the opera offering, the Proms, the genuinely scholarly programmes about composers and musicians. Then there’s the World Service, programming in Welsh – even taken together these cost a fraction of the TV offering and in my view are actually more important at knitting together the national fabric. There must be some way of maintaining them as a publicly-funded, free-to-air service.
Hasn’t the BBC recently killed off many of its local BBC stations?
The sooner that the Belittling Britain Corporation is euthanised, the better.
Well I would imagine there have been a few unattributed conversations in the background from Labour supporters along the lines of you scratch our back and your charter will be extended.
Pretty much the only hope the BBC has of continuing.
There is a plus factor in the new Doctor Who – you can play ‘woke bingo’.
A trans character : pronouns : mixed race family : a female Unit boss in a wheelchair : a non-binary doctor : being ‘female’ to shake off the curse of having hosted a timelord mind : a brown Isaac Newton.
My only concern is whether I missed any other points. I am sure there must be more.
Looks enjoyable, but I’m sure the joke wears thin before one episode is done. If you work in ‘The Blob’ and aren’t a woketard its simply taking your work home with you.
‘Sadly, mainstream channels’ factual programming is now at a nadir, with stringent political imperatives and strictly-policed taboos crippling their ability to make rigorous documentaries.’
I started watching the Caesar progamme the other night which I thought would be interesting as I wasn’t familiar with his early years rising to power. But the programme makers couldn’t resist ‘drawing parallels’ by framing it as a populist revolt, with contributions from Rory Stewart and Baroness Chakribati. Of course Trump gets a mention. Brexit can’t be far off either.
The great irony in this case is that they are right. The late Roman Republic was stuffed with elites controlling the money and arguing among themselves with little concern for the masses other than keeping them down.
The only difference is that Tribune Boris was only metaphorically stabbed to death in the legislature, not literally.
More’s the pity.
The other difference is that Caesar, for all his faults, was a military genius (something I don’t think can be said of Boris).
This is an excellent example of how a monopoly often behave, they’re not just corrupted abusive, they’re often incompetent and poorly managed and not particularly innovative.
The most worrying feature of those who espouse Woke ideology is that many are totally unaware they are doing so.
In other versions of identity (victim/oppressor) politics, such as Marxism and NAZIsm, the supporters were aware that they held these views.
The BBC etc is not aware: they think they are ‘neutral’, ‘balanced’ etc.
This makes it doubly hard to deal with. Some hopeful signs are when the Woke make such outrageous statements that many ordinary folk wake up to the absurdity.
This suggests that, rather trying to moderate their pronouncements, we should encourage them to be even more extreme.
I stopped paying the licence fee several years ago. I haven’t watched or listened to the BBC for nearly 20 years, having previously been a news addict.
It became intolerable once every area of the output was “woked.”
I’ve had a couple of letters demanding money, but I would literally go to prison before paying this morally bankrupt organisation another penny.
I’m 74 and remember with huge affection the radio of my earlier life. It is a national loss.
At least in prison you’ll be provided with meals and a warm place to sleep. I wonder what television offerings they have, or if the library is worth while.
Contrast two discussion programmes: Newsnight, with a staff of 60+, and Triggernometry, with maybe half a dozen on a busy day. There’s no contest, is there? Time to call it a day and get proper jobs, Auntie.
Or contrast Free Speech Nation, brilliantly hosted by Andrew Doyle over on GB News, selection of topics and guests providing excellent summary and dissection of a week’s top issues. All manner of news, especially around censorship and thought control wokery, is thoughtfully, wittily analysed and exposed. Truly masterful hosting by Doyle, I think, imperceptibly weaving maximum background information to carry discussion forward, freeing guests to go deeper, and leavening w/wit as needed or deserved.
There’s nothing approaching it on the BBC. For us it’s become THE weekly news programme not to miss, but free speech issues are high up our list.
Triggernometry’s Frances Foster (and also KK?) is sometimes a guest.
BBC: Biased Broadcasting Corporation.
Bollo**s Broadcasting Corporation.
The BBC is always promoting an alternative ‘progressive’ reality. They have happily broadcast every lie and faked figure issued by Hamas and Iran over the last few months.
“There is even the faint possibility that BBC chiefs decide to course-correct on their own initiative, ending the progressive agitprop in drama and children’s programming, and make a genuine effort to build bridges with conservative-minded people.”
Lol. No, there is no such possibility. The Left regards its cultural hegemony with something like the Brezhnev Doctrine, which held, essentially, that socialism is permanent and has no reverse gear.
The license fee has always smacked of those petty, tin-pot dictatorships where only the politically safe may own a radio.
Scrap the licence fee and send the money back to tax payers.
For any tory politician, there is not a single vote to be lost on that one.
Drama is “woke” everywhere though – in the West. And not so easy for keen amateurs to do well as it’s expensive. Also creative types tend to be more woke too, so perhaps it’s just back to reading or watching reruns on YouTube!
I do wonder about this term “creative types”. It strikes me (as a creative, but not a “type”!) that the vast majority are singularly lacking in imagination, and are simply regurgitating what they’ve been spoonfed in ever more banal ways.
It would be easier on the eye, if an entire production, especially of classics, had black actors and actresses instead of a notch potch. And why can’t the coloured community and/or the BBC produce dramas about Africa? Plenty of scenarios to choose from and interesting and multifaceted stories. And lots of opportunities for black actors……
I haven’t watched the BBC, ITV or Channel 4 for years – but most especially the BBC. It is rotten to its grotesque core and wholly unaccountable to its diminishing audience.
I might consider viewing the BBC TV again if, at some point in a generally pessimistic future, it produces and broadcasts a biographical series on the life of Nelson Mandela, in which the lead role is played by a white, disabled, gay, trans man.
If the advert is any indication, BBC has now bollocked The Famous Five
Isn’t that a children’s show?
Apparently in the latest episode an alien didn’t identify as a she or he. It identified as non-binary. Th Dr apparently had to apologise for misgendering it. Cringe worthy embarrassment.
I assumed that the picture was of another ‘trans’ character of some sort.
Dramatically, there is no reason to object, per se, to a non-white actor portraying a white character, historical or fictitious. I have seen an excellent all-black production of Hamlet. Of course, being an all-black production meant that the villains were also black. The test seems to be, was this actor chosen because they would give the best delivery of the part, regardless of whether the character is a goodie, or a baddie, or as a stooge of the producer’s wish to make a political statement? Anyone for a black Shylock?
Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar.
The recent Macbeth with Denzel Washington.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples.
I’m sure all of those outraged by this latest excess of WOKE would have been equally horrified by white actors playing Othello? Or male actors playing female roles?
Strangely quiet out there….
LOL!
Now sham pain has turned his/her less-than-lofty intellect to the question BBC casting and…
… what do ya know – the same old jeer-and-sneer with a dash of whataboutery
Dull old people are outraged, as they are about everything.
Young people couldn’t care less.
Yet again, the familiar jeer-and-sneer.
What age/gender/nationality is sham pain we need to ask. More to the point: does sham pain actually believe in anything or is this just a mouthy character putting on a contrarian attitude where he/she knows it will cause a bit of a stir? A bit like noisy drunkard in fact.
That’s remarkably ageist of you. For all your faults I hadn’t taken you for a closet bigot.
I don’t think its bigotry has ever been hidden in a closet!