on television
from November 2007

Stephen Fry is being fast-tracked into becoming a national treasure as he seems to be never off our TV screens. His latest platform was a documentary, HIV and Me, intended as an update on the medical breakthrough for the treatment of AIDS. This was illustrated by a series of sympathetic interviews.

Fry is skilled at doing fruity chuckles and deep, almost wordless concern with a commentary delivered by a master of classical acting, all faultless grammar and received pronunciation. He doesn’t scare the horses and is one of the nation’s favourite queers, so much more obviously intelligent than other camp queens we needn’t mention. He was the almost perfect choice for this programme - a gay version of Michael Palin, able to articulate ideas that can resonate well with ordinary folk.

This programme reviews, in bite size chunks, the early history of the AIDS pandemic amongst the habitués of San Francisco’s bathhouses; the nihilistic ‘Don’t die of ignorance’ advert, voiced over by a lugubrious John Hurt; the lack of any cure and the recent combination drugs treatment that in the UK at least are keeping people alive for many, often unexpected, years. Fry becomes a lot more serious when visiting Uganda where these life saving drugs are not readily available, largely as a result of government corruption.

The optimism of a medical break through is counterbalanced in the later part of the programme by examining the continuing social stigma that suffers experience. Few patients were prepared to be publicly filmed, fearing the effects on them and their families who might be threatened by verbal or physical abuse. There were intense emotional moments when Ugandan mothers prepared memory books for their children in the expectation that they would not see them reach adulthood. Viewers were reminded that AIDS sufferers are always under threat from a range of other infections. A practical strategy was introduced at the end. The BBC is setting up an information website called, whimsically, G.I Jonny.

So, who would want to watch such a programme? AIDS sufferers will know the medical score and it is probably not a happy evening’s entertainment. Evangelical Christians probably don’t want all the good news either. Stephen Fry groupies who lap up every TV appearance might watch and get the messages in an easily digestible manner. Although a little arch in style, this could well be shown with no offence to a youth club audience or Y11 PSHEC classes.

Another film with a major message is Atonement. Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, this is a complex mixture of 1930s country house period epic, the traumatic effects of war and the horrendous effects of telling a lie that puts a man in prison. Poison-tongued gossip queens take note! James McAvoy, everyone’s must have fashionable pin-up actor, has a fatal attraction for a daughter in the big house where his mother is the house keeper. He shags Keira Knighley up against the library shelves - this and his use of the c-word used in an ironic love letter seals his fate as a lower class upstart. He is subsequently accused of an assault on another young girl, this incident allegedly witnessed by another young minx whose school girl crush on James was repulsed.

This is an old fashioned, doomed romance in a chocolate box setting, a moral tale with an uncompromising message. It takes us out of drab suburbia with a cast of pretty thespians to ogle. We are expected to strive to be nice to others and maintain high standards of integrity. There are many worse off people than ourselves as Fry’s documentary reminds us. Health is more important than wealth but there are not always happy endings to life. If this is all a bit too gloomy then Strictly Come Dancing and Graham Norton are back to return some frothy campness to our screens.

Nick Tyldesley