New Blog Page: Proper Gander (Extras)

Back in July I posted on the blog a page dedicated to the Proper Gander TV Column, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary in the Socialist Standard this year. 

Following up on that, I thought I would compile a list of the twenty most popular Proper Gander TV Columns . . . according to blog stats, that is. Any opportunity to prod readers of the blog into exploring the Socialist Standard archive.

If you click on the month and year, it will lead you to the article.

20. Music For The Masses (Nov 2017)

19. Delicious Chips For Their Tea (Mar 2018)

18. Lights . . . Camera . . . Political Action? (Feb 2024)

17. Porn and Real Life (Sep 2014)

16. Home Truths (Aug 2017)

15. Back To The Future (Sep 2016)

15. YouTube And You (Feb 2020)

15. Flat broke (May 2023)

12. Alice Through The Looking Glass (Apr 2019)

11. The Benefits Trap (Jan 2017)

10. Maid In America (Jul 2017)

09. Monarchy Malarkey (Jun 2016)

08. Theroux the keyhole (May 2026)

07. The Vegan Revolution (May 2017)

06. Living The Dream (Dec 2016)

05. Mistaken Identity (Aug 2019)

04. Peering At The Peers (Apr 2017)

03. Super marketing (Sep 2023)

02. Bitter Pill (Mar 2015)

01. The Hand-Made Tale (Mar 2019)

TV Review: Camping it up (1994)

Brookside

TV Review from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the history of British TV comedy there has been little to match the comic effect of an outrageously effeminate male camping it up with the best of them. Exaggerated mannerisms and affectations have delighted audiences for decades. Many of the popular sitcoms have had a camp figure of fun somewhere - Frank Williams as the overblown vicar in Dad's Army, the twinkly German Lieutenant in ‘Allo 'Allo, Melvyn Hayes in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and John Inman in everything he’s ever been in are among those that spring readily to mind.

As far as mainstream British comedy has been concerned, campness is the “acceptable” face of an unmentionable homosexuality to the viewers and actors alike, so much so that such a great actor as Kenneth Williams — as camp as a row of tents to the end — could barely admit his own homosexuality to himself let alone anybody else, as his Diaries testify. Williams was clearly aware that camp humour, in his day at least, hinted at homosexuality but rarely endorsed it in any way, being content to remain at the level of innuendo and whimsy. In recent years one or two comics have broken this unspoken rule, most clearly Julian Clary whose full frontal assaults on the sexual sensibilities of the audience have won him an army of gay supporters, but most homosexual actors have kept with the approach developed in the music halls and adapted for TV and film.

The British film and TV industries have been the masters of camp humour. It can still be seen in Coronation Street occasionally, though with the welcome twist that it emerges most notably of all in the affectedness of the definitely heterosexual Racquel. barmaid at the Rovers. More straightforwardly. Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard and Charles Hawtrey all became household names because of their ability to mince in front of the cameras. Did they do their sexuality a disservice? To the extent that they reinforced one of capitalist society’s most enduring stereotypes, probably, but those homosexuals in the acting profession and elsewhere who took an outwardly hostile stance towards homosexuality for the sake of their public image did a greater disservice still.

Innumerable actors have been paid to betray their own sexuality. A recent re-run on BBC2 of one of the classic Steptoe and Son episodes saw old Albert berating Harold for consorting with an antique dealer he considered to be "a bleeding poof’, in the true style of a working class Tory bigot. What many viewers wouldn’t have been aware of was that Wilfred Brambell, the actor who played Albert, was himself a homosexual convicted in the early 1960s under the British state's anti-gay sex laws. Watching this episode again, it was difficult to raise much of a laugh.

Prisoners all

The current cult TV show among the active gay lobby in Britain is the Australian import Prisoner Cell Block H, which is still showing on most ITV networks. This is strange, as Cell Block H is a programme transparently about Good and Evil, and the active lesbians have generally slotted into the latter category. The leading lesbian, a warder called Joan Ferguson, otherwise known as ‘The Freak", has a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and the general manner of a woman whose role in life is to cause as much anguish for others as possible. Since Prisoner finished its turn in Australia several years ago. we can surmise that she can soon expect the call-up for EastEnders.

The only reason lesbians can find this show attractive, apart from its marvellously worked-out plots, is that it focuses on the lives of oppressed women. But with what is commonly considered to be a psychopathic "bull-dyke” as the chief character, it is not much of a blast forward for the gay counter-culture. In truth, for all her entertainment value, "The Freak" gives far more succour to the stereotypical image of homosexuals than Kenneth Williams or Larry Grayson ever did.

To find the most realistic treatment of homosexuality on TV we must turn, once again, to Channel Four's Brookside. Here, the unfolding of Beth Jordache’s lesbian sexuality has been tastefully and seriously portrayed, even if her lesbianism is a partial reaction against the sexual abuse meted out by her father. Most pleasing of all, the character of Beth is not stereotyped — on the contrary, she appears to be a normal intelligent teenager confronting bigotry and deceit, and winning support because of the strength of her arguments to live her life without the interference of those who want to impose their own norms on her.

Brookside could have gone for cheap laughs with this storyline, but it is to be congratulated on its approach. For the more the working class see their differences — of colour, gender and sexuality — eclipsed by their common bonds rather than highlighted through division, the easier it will be to achieve a society where stereotyping is remembered primarily as a feature of daft old films and peculiar Australian soap operas.

Dave Perrin

The wrong story (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year BBC television serialised a new adaptation of William Golding’s famous 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. There was uniform agreement among the critics that it was well made, but does the novel itself tell the right story? In portraying what happens to a group of British schoolboys stranded alone on an island, it shows a fairly rapid descent from civilised behaviour to conflict, chaos and eventually outright savagery. What’s usually been taken from the story is that evil, depravity and brutality are inherent in human nature and, if left to themselves, any group of humans will develop a mob mentality, end up at one another’s throats and a hierarchy of tyranny will form.

It’s a plot that certainly chimes in with a lot of what was being written and published widely in the decades following the Second World War. We need only think of books like Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape, Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression, Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, and (arguably) George Orwell’s Animal Farm. And from some sources at least this take on humanity kept on coming right up to the end of the century, an example being Richard Wrangham’s 1996 book, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. What such writers were doing in effect was to put forward a secular version of the longstanding religious dogma of original sin, a view of human beings as tainted by innate selfishness and aggression and in inevitable competition with one another. As for Golding, this was openly his agenda, as expressed in the words he used in an interview in 1970, where he said ‘man is a fallen being’ and went on to state: ‘He is gripped by original sin. His nature is sinful and his state perilous’. He is also on record as saying about himself: ‘I have always understood the Nazis, because I am that sort by nature.’ So what he seems to be doing in Lord of the Flies is projecting his own dark view of humanity on to children while turning it into a supposed lesson about human nature for millions to read.

As for the TV adaptation, it must be said that its creator, the screenwriter Jack Thorne, did make an effort to temper the ‘human nature’ message by providing ‘back stories’ for its main protagonists. So, for example, we were given to deduce that the savagery of one of the most violent child characters might be, at least in part, a function of the loveless household he had been brought up in. But such tweaks only mitigated to a limited extent the original message carried by Golding’s book and which, as we have seen, the author himself was never shy of defending. In light of this, we can only agree with what Steve Coleman wrote in an article on Golding in the August 1993 edition of this journal: ‘Few novels have so eloquently served the cause of capitalist ideology which contends that humans are inherently aggressive, gullible, self-serving, easily led and uncooperative than Golding’s Lord of the Flies.’

So one thing to be said is that the 2026 TV version of the book came across as a bit of a throwback, largely reflecting as it did views about human nature which have been widely superseded since the book’s original publication. It seemed to close its eyes to the large amount of recent well-evidenced research and investigation on the topic to be found in works whose titles speak for themselves, for example Beyond War. The Human Potential for Peace; Team Human; Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity; Ultra-Social, many of which have been discussed in articles and reviews in the Socialist Standard (see Suggested reading ). The majority of these investigations conclude not that human beings are automatically non-selfish, non-competitive, or non-prone to violence but rather that selfishness, non-cooperation and fighting are not their most natural inclination, even if they are capable of being driven to such behaviour by circumstances. The historian Rutger Bregman, in particular, in his 2020 book, Humankind. A Hopeful History (reviewed in the Socialist Standard May 2021), explicitly takes up Golding’s challenge about the kind of situation portrayed in Lord of the Flies by recounting a ‘real-life’ story of shipwrecked schoolboys. What took place in this case was the exact opposite of what was portrayed by Golding. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga stole a boat, got caught in a storm, and were washed up on a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific. They stayed there for 15 months, during which time they established a friendly cooperative way of living, taking care of one another before they were discovered and rescued. In other words, when real children found themselves alone on a real island, there was no impulse to tyranny, no one descended into savagery, nor was any kind of cruel hierarchy set up as in Golding’s novel. This, as well as other examples of human behaviour Bregman draws on, leads him to reject the notion of an innately self-serving, potentially evil human species. Instead anti-social behaviour, when it occurs, is seen as the reaction of the highly adaptable and flexible creatures that human beings are to conditioning and circumstance (ie, bad circumstances can make us bad people), all of which lies very far away from Golding’s dark view of humanity.

So, while there is no doubt that, when people feel unsafe, unseen, deprived, or their needs are unmet, their actions can shift in unpredictable and undesirable ways, overwhelmingly it is the human capacity for working cooperatively with others that comes to the fore when circumstances make it necessary. What we can envisage with some confidence, therefore, is the likelihood that this will be the default behaviour in the democratic free-access society of from each according to ability to each according to need that is campaigned for by socialists. So not difficult at all to imagine that, in a society organised in that way, peacefulness, cooperation and empathy – the diametrical opposite of what is portrayed in Lord of the Flies – will be the overwhelming order of the day.

Howard Moss

New Blog Page: Proper Gander

Proper Gander At 15

While reviews of television programmes have occasionally appeared in The Socialist Standard since the 1950s (with possibly the earliest being in January 1955, about the BBC’s adaptation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four), it wasn’t until 1985 that they became the subject of a regular column. This was Steve Coleman’s always-perceptive and engagingly-written Between The Lines, which ran until 1994. Dave Perrin then followed on with his sharp analysis of how TV reflects the world, continuing until 2001. A decade later, The Socialist Standard’s Editorial Committee decided to bring back the format, and suggested the name Proper Gander. I was happy to be asked about writing it, having recently produced a collection of reviews of dystopian fiction to accompany a Summer School talk. 

The first Proper Gander article appeared in January 2011, covering the sixth series of The Apprentice, which still continues unchanged in format in 2026. Much else has changed in the realm of television, though, in those 15 years. Most obviously, there is now much more ‘content’ competing for our attention, not just in the growth of channels available with or without a subscription, but also through social media and YouTube. While the traditional television channels are steadily on the decline, they can still produce ‘content’ which other outlets can’t manage. TV documentaries and video podcasts are both in the market of influencing viewers’ opinions, but the talking-head template of podcasts isn’t equivalent to the journalistic format of documentaries. The BBC’s Panorama and the exposés commissioned by Channel 4 have remained consistently reliable as sources for Proper Gander articles. Well, that’s reliable in the sense of always being there rather than reliable as interpretations of their subject matter. Usually in a polished, abridged way, they highlight problems generated by the capitalist system, but never identify the system as their cause, of course.

Drama can have more of an emotional impact than a documentary can, whether or not it’s based on real events. An emerging trend during the 2020s is that politicised dramas are likely to have a high profile on the sporadic occasions one is produced. ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office and Netflix’s Don’t Look Up and Adolescence raised awareness and prompted discussion, for a while. The BBC has appeared less interested in this sub-genre for many years, especially compared with its often-impressive output in the 1960s and ‘70s. 

A trend which appears to have burnt itself out is trash television, such as exploitative gameshows, ‘poverty porn’ schlockumentaries and point-and-sneer talk shows such as The Jeremy Kyle Show. This type of programme, the modern counterpart of travelling ‘freakshows’, has been supplanted by social media content which even more bluntly insults those already downtrodden. Another TV genre which has dwindled is that of comedy, maybe because wider society finds less to laugh about these days. So, sitcoms, satire and sketch shows have rarely been the subject of a Proper Gander article, unfortunately. Looking into what has and hasn’t been covered in the column over the years has been made much easier with the listing below, with a handy description of each show discussed. Thanks go to Imposs1904 for taking the time to compile this for his splendid blog.

Mike Foster

July 2026

2011

• Jan:  Proper Gander (Alan Sugar's The Apprentice.)
• Feb: Know Your Onions (The Onion's satirical programme,  In The Know.)
• Mar: Brooker's Bile (Charlie Brooker's How TV Ruined Your Life.)
• Apr: Cabarets in the lunch hour (BBC2's The British At Work.)
• May: The Stepford Geezers (ITV2's docusoap, The Only Way is Essex.)
• Jun: Celebritherapy (ITV1's reality TV show, Home Is Where The Heart Is.)
• Jul: Choosing To Die (BBC Scotland documentary, Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, on the subject of assisted suicide.)
• Aug: The pecking order (Channel 4’s Undercover Boss.)
• Sep: From WAGs to Riches (BBC3's celebrity culture documentary, Cherry’s Cash Dilemmas.)
• Oct: Cleopatra Coming At Ya (BBC’s children series, Horrible Histories.)
• Nov: Stripped Blair (Channel 4's The Hunt For Tony Blair. The Comic Strip crowd combine political satire with 1950s film noir.)
• Dec: Sugar Rush (Alan Sugar's new reality show, The Young Apprentice.)

2012

• Jan: Reflections on Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror.)
• Feb: Fancy a Pint? (BBC4’s documentary, The Rules of Drinking.)
• Mar: Point and Sneer (Channel4’s docusoap Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.)
• Apr: Right whinger (BBC2’s Rights Gone Wrong? with Andrew Neil.)
• May: Camcordia (Channel4's The Sinking Of The Concordia – Caught On Camera.)
• Jun: A Masterclass in Manipulation (ITV1's documentary, Britain Beware, about Public Information Films.)
• Jul: A Load of Crystal Balls (Sky's series, Psychic Today.)
• Aug: Undercover Under the Covers (UKTV Really reality television show, Cheaters.)
• Sep: Tory Teenagers (BBC2's documentary, Young, Bright and On the Right.)
• Oct: Giggly Walking CCTV Cameras (Channel 4's reality television show, The Audience.)
• Nov: The Magic and History Tour (BBC3's documentary, Creationism: Conspiracy Road Trip. Mixing pre-history with 'intelligent design' and age-old debates between science and religion.)
• Dec: Bed Pan Humour (BBC4's satirical comedy about the NHS, Getting On.)

2013

• Jan: Pandering and Pampering (BBC2's Inside Claridge's.)
• Feb: Courting Mormons (BBC3's documentary, Young, Mormon and Single.)
• Mar: Night Of The Living Tweet (Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror.)
• Apr: Christianity’s Inanities (Religious television.)
• May: Monarchy’s Maladies (BBC2's documentary, Fit To Rule – How Royal Illness Changed History.)
• Jun: Hoard Today, Gone Tomorrow (BBC1’s Britain’s Biggest Hoarders.)
• Jul: Quizzing the Whizzkids (Channel 4's documentary, Child Genius.)
• Aug: Hidden Cameraderie (Channel 4's reality TV show, Eye Spy.)
• Sep: Smoking Woodbines In The Outside Lav (The working class in television, Paul O’Grady’s Working Britain.)
• Oct: Left In The Dark (Channel 4's The Blackout. A docu-drama about Britain's National Grid being at the receiving end of a cyber-attack, and the resultant breakdown of society.) 
• Nov: Fascist Pepperpots (Dr Who, the Daleks and storylines drawn from the real world.)
• Dec: Fish In The Net (MTV's reality TV show, Catfish.)

2014

• Jan: Screening The Working Class (Owen Jones giving Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture Totally Shameless: How TV Portrays The Working Class.)
• Feb: Who Benefits From 'Benefits Street'?  (Channel 4's docusoap, Benefits Street.)
• Mar: Channel Hopping The Shopping Channels (QVC and BidTV.)
• Apr: To EDL and Back (BBC3's documentary, EDL Girls – Don’t Call Me Racist.)
• May: Mythtaken Identity (BBC2's The Olden Days: The power of the past in Britain.)
• Jun: Ballads And Beards (BBC1's  Eurovision Song Contest.)
• Jul: Hunger For Anger (Channel 5’s Angry Britain: Mean Streets.)
• Aug: The Downside of Upgrading (Jacques Peretti's documentary series, The Men Who Made Us Spend.)
• Sep: Porn and Real Life (More 4 documentary, The Golden Rules of Porn.)
• Oct: Electronic Heroin (Channel 4's Web Junkie: China’s Addicted Teens.)
• Nov: A Barrage of Farage (Panorama’s The Farage Factor. The murky shenanigans and double dealings of Nigel Farage.)
• Dec: Fiscal Exercise (Channel 4’s documentary about social mobility, How Rich Are You?)

2015

• Jan: Do Have Nightmares (BBC 1's Crimewatch.)
• Feb: Court On Camera (ITV's British version of Judge Judy, Judge Rinder.)
• Mar: Bitter Pill (Adam Curtis's documentary, Bitter Lake.)
• Apr: Putting Protest To The Test (BBC3’s documentary, Fighting The System.)
• May: Puppets and Politics (Puppet-based satirical sketch show, Newzoids.)
• Jun: ‘I Love The Smell Of Rubbish In The Morning’ (BBC2’s fly-on-the-wall documentary Wastemen.)
• Jul: Taken To Taskers (Channel 4’s reality TV show, Running The Shop.)
• Aug: Together In Electric Dreams (Channel 4’s drama series, Humans.)
• Sep: Under the Concrete Carpet (BBC4's Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield.)
• Oct: High-Tech Hide and Seek (Channel 4's Hunted. State surveillance as a game show.)
• Nov: Soldiering On (BBC1's reality TV show, DIY SOS – Homes For Veterans. A special makeover show focusing on creating a liveable environment for ex-armed forces personnel with physical and mental health conditions.)
• Dec: Cheapness At a Price (Channel 4's Dispatches programme goes undercover in Aldi’s Supermarket Secrets.) 

2016

• Jan: Prejudice and Pride (BBC 3's Reggie Yates’ Extreme UK: Gay And Under Attack.)
• Feb: Victim Porn (A review of voyeuristic schlockumentaries such as I Survived Evil and Fear Thy Neighbor.)
• Mar: The Golden Swill Bucket Awards (Television adverts.)
• Apr: Whatever Happened To Political Drama? (A look at Play For Today and Our Friends in the North.)
• May: Legal Highs And Lows (BBC3's documentary series, Drugs Map Of Britain.)
• Jun: Monarchy Malarkey (Channel 4’s soap opera sitcom, The Windsors.)
• Jul: Branded Comedy (BBC4's sitcom, Going Forward.)
• Aug: Belonging to Our Belongings (Channel 4's reality TV show, Life Stripped Bare.)
• Sep: Back To The Future (BBC2's In The 80s With Dominic Sandbrook.)
• Oct: Prison Break (CBS's Reality TV show, Troubled Teens: Jail Shock, A look at juvenile detention.)
• Nov: Soap Gets In Your Eyes (A look at the BBC's longstanding soap, EastEnders.)
• Dec: Living The Dream (Adam Curtis's documentary, ‘Hypernormalisation’.)

2017

• Jan: The Benefits Trap (Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake'.)
• Feb: Views On The News (BBC2’s reality TV show, Common Sense.)
• Mar: The Extremes of Exploitation (Channel 4’s documentary, The Modern British Slave Trade.)
• Apr: Peering At The Peers (BBC2’s documentary series Meet The Lords.)
• May: The Vegan Revolution ( BBC iPlayer's mockumentary, Carnage.)
• Jun: Slave to the Algorithm (Panorama's What Facebook Knows About You.)
• Jul: Maid In America (The TV adaptation of Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid’s Tale.)
• Aug: Home Truths (BBC1's reality TV show, The Week The Landlords Moved In.)
• Sep: From The UN To Anarchism (BBC4’s Storyville, Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government.)
• Oct: The Jihadis’ Tale ( Peter Kosminsky's political drama, The State, about the experiences of four young British Muslims who fly to Syria to join Islamic State.)
• Nov: Music For The Masses (BBC4's documentary series, Tunes For Tyrants: Music and Power. Authoritarian regimes and their use and abuse of music for propaganda purposes.)
• Dec: Nutters and Putters (Gary Younge's Channel 4 documentary about disquiet in the American heartland,  Angry, White and American.)

2018

• Jan: Out Of The Blue (David Attenborough's Blue Planet II.)
• Feb: On The House (David Olusoga social history documentary, A House Through Time.)
• Mar: Delicious Chips For Their Tea (Product placement and Coronation Street.)
• Apr: At The Movies: Red Carpet Campaigning (A look at the Oscars.)
• May: A Tale Of Two Cities (China Mieville's dystopia drama,The City And The City.)
• Jun: Image And Identity (BBC3's documentaries on obesity and body image.)
• Jul: ‘One Does’ (Television coverage of the Royal Wedding.)
• Aug: Counter Culture (BBC’s Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind The Counter.)
• Sep: Revenue Streams (New media and streaming platforms.)
• Oct: Guarded Bodies (BBC1’s political drama, Bodyguard.)
• Nov: The Great Russian Fake Off (An overview of the Russian State's ongoing disinformation campaigns on social media.)
• Dec: Pulling The Trigger (Derren Brown's Netflix special, Sacrifice.)

2019

• Jan: Sold A Pup? (BBC 1's consumer programme, Watchdog.)
• Feb: Making A Drama Out Of A Crisis (Channel 4’s docudrama, Brexit: The Uncivil War.)
• Mar: The Hand-Made Tale (BBC2’s The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts.)
• Apr: Alice Through The Looking Glass (Channel 4’s documentary, Sleeping With The Far Right.)
• May: Investigating The Yorkshire Ripper Investigation (BBC4’s three-part series, The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story.)
• Jun: With Kid Gloves (ITV documentary series, Planet Child.)
• Jul: ‘An Urgent Referral Still Takes Quite a Long Time’ (Channel 5’s fly-on-the-consulting-room-wall documentary, GPs Behind Closed Doors.)
• Aug: Mistaken Identity (BBC3's political drama, The Left Behind.)
• Sep: Can’t A Cleaner Like Avocados? (BBC2’s How The Middle Class Ruined Britain.)
• Oct: Palmed Off (BBC3's Unmasked: Make-Up’s Big Secret. A look at the environmental impact of palm oil production.)
• Nov: Cash And The Castaways (Channel 4's reality TV show, Treasure Island With Bear Grylls. A variation on Lord of the Flies - but with adults - for your evening's entertainment. Not so much a 'survival of the fittest' but a 'survival of the slickest'.)
• Dec: ‘You’ve Had It, Ain’t Ya?’ (BBC4’s Arena documentary, A British Guide To The End Of The World.)

2020

• Jan: ‘All I Can Think About Is The Housing’ (Channel 4's Dispatches programme, Born Homeless.)
• Feb: YouTube And You (A look at the social media behemoth, YouTube.)
• Mar: All’s Whale That Ends Well? (BBC 3's documentary, Stacey Dooley Investigates: The Whale Hunters.)
• Apr: ‘The Detail Which Moves You Is The Same Detail That Lets You Know It’s True’ (BBC2's Confronting Holocaust Denial With David Baddiel.)
• May: TV and the Virus (Television coverage of the lockdown.)
• Jun: At The Movies (Jeff Gibbs environmental documentary, Planet of the Humans.)
• Jul: Luxury Legoland (BBC2's documentary series, Inside Monaco: Playground Of The Rich.)
• Aug: Turning The Page (Channel 4's documentary, Page Three: The Naked Truth.)
• Sep: ‘I’ve Got Nothing. I Ain’t Got No-one. But I’ve Got The Shops’ (Channel 5’s fly-on-the-wall documentary, Shoplifters: At War With The Law.)
• Oct: Radio Ga-Ga (TalkRADIO and right-wing talking points.)
• Nov: Rubber Reboot (Britbox revives 1980s favourite, Spitting Image, but misses the satirical mark.)
• Dec: Control And Coercion (BBC3's documentary on domestic violence, Is This Coercive Control?)

2021

• Jan: Cutting-Edge Drama (Steve McQueen's Small Axe films.)
• Feb: Fame And Fortune (BBC 2’s documentary series Celebrity: A 21st Century Story.)
• Mar: An Emotional History (Adam Curtis’s documentary, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.)
• Apr: Keep Calm And Carry On With The Clichés (BBC1’s documentary, Blitz Spirit With Lucy Worsley.)
• May: ‘She’s Part Of Those Statistics Now’ (Dispatches' The Black Maternity Scandal.)
• Jun: Track And Trace (BBC3’s Tagged series: Women on Tag.)
• Jul: Another Problematic ‘Class System’ (Panorama's Paralympics: The Unfair Games?)
• Aug: Brexit And Exports (Panorama's Brexit: Six Months On.)
• Sep: Between The Lines (BBC3’s documentary series, High: Confessions Of An Ibiza Drug Mule.)
• Oct: Remoulding The Activist (CBS’s reality TV show, The Activist. The politics of charity and 'activism' as a game show.)
• Nov: Police And Abuse (Channel 4's Dispatches programme, Cops On Trial. When the police are the criminals.)
• Dec: Capturing The Christmas Spirit (Christmas, consumerism and woke culture.)

2022

• Jan: Charged Up (Channel 4's Dispatches programme, The Truth About Electric Cars, and BBC 1's Panorama's, The Electric Car Revolution: Winners And Losers.)
• Feb: The Shape Of Things To Comet (Adam McKay's political satire, Don't Look Up.)
• Mar: Where the wealth went (BBC 2’s documentary, The Decade The Rich Won.)
• Apr: The Media as Intermediary (Media bias and state propaganda.)
• May: Four Sale (The privatisation of Channel 4.)
• Jun: Getting over the horizon (Panorama's The Post Office Scandal.)
• Jul: A Bite From The Apple (Apple TV's dystopian drama, Severance.)
• Aug: Hack To The Future (Channel 4's political drama, The Undeclared War.)
• Sep: A Problem Not Registering (BBC News documentary, Disappearing Dentists.)
• Oct: Profits and power ( Panorama's The Energy Crisis: Who’s Cashing In? The energy companies and their super profits.)
• Nov: Hard Labour (Al Jazeera’s four-part documentary series, The Labour Files. The Labour Right's undermining of Jeremy Corbyn and the smearing of the Labour Left.)
• Dec: Mindsets And Misinterpretations (Panorama's Disaster Deniers: Hunting The Trolls. Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists pouring scorn on disasters and tragedies.)

2023

• Jan:  The richest and poorest (Channel 5's two-part documentary, How The Other Half Live.)
• Feb: Dukes And Rebukes (Channel 4's Prince Andrew: The Musical.)
• Mar: Exploring Englishness (Channel 4's Grayson Perry’s Full English.)
• Apr: Exploitation at work (Panorama's Sex For Work: The True Cost Of Our Tea.)
• May: Flat broke (Panorama's What’s Gone Wrong With Our Housing?.)
• Jun: Send in the crowns (The King's coronation.)
• Jul: Splashing out on drip (Channel 4’s Untold series. Addicted to Drip, which looks at addiction and conspicuous consumption.)
• Aug: The state of North Korea (BBC2 documentary, North Korea: The Insiders.)
• Sep: Super marketing (Channel 4’s documentary, Secrets Of The Supermarket Own-Brands.)
• Oct: SSRIs and side effects (BBC iPlayer's documentary series, Are My Antidepressants Worth It?. Mental health and medication amongst young people in Scotland.)
• Nov: Gathering storm (Channel 4’s docudrama, Partygate. The Conservative Party at play, misbehaving during Covid and lockdown.)
• Dec: Fashion Victims (Panorama's Boohoo’s Broken Promises. A look at the business model of fast fashion.)

2024

• Jan: An appetite for profit (BBC 3's The Skinny Jab Uncovered.)
• Feb: Lights . . . Camera . . . Political Action? (ITV's political docudrama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office.)
• Mar: Crossing the line (Channel 4's documentary series, Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain.) 
• Apr: Presenting the past (Historical dramas and multiculturalism.)
• May: Going public about going private (Panorama’s NHS Patients Going Private: What Are The Risks?)
• Jun: United by music, non-politically? (BBC1's  Eurovision Song Contest.)
• Jul: Temu’s temerity (Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary, The Truth About Temu.)
• Aug: Anti-social media (ITVX’s drama serial, Douglas Is Cancelled.)
• Sep: Hacked off (ITV’s phone-hacking documentary, Tabloids On Trial.)
• Oct: Flipped Off (Channel 4's reality TV show, The Great House Giveaway. The popular British past times of house renovations and Keeping up with the Joneses.)
• Nov: Not-so special offers (Panorama's Supermarket Deals: How Good Are They? The reality of big business supermarkets. If it looks too good to be true . . . )
• Dec: Far into the far right (Channel 4’s documentary, Undercover: Exposing The Far Right. A look at the growth of the far right across Europe.)

2025

• Jan: The latest celebrity to be accused (The scandal surrounding MasterChef presenter, Gregg Wallace.)
• Feb: All over the shop (Netflix's Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy.)
• Mar: The maxim of maximising (Radio 4's documentary series, The Prophets of Profit.)
• Apr: Realistically altruistically (Radio 4's series, The Infinite Monkey Cage.)
• May: Lessons from Adolescence (Netflix’s crime drama Adolescence.)
• Jun: Looking into Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror.)
• Jul: Being informed about informers (BBC documentary, Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within, on state surveillance in Putin's Russia.)
• Aug: Tell A Vision In Turkmenistan (YouTube documentary,  TV in Turkmenistan is Insane.)
• Sep: Heading down stream (The growth in streaming services.)
• Oct: Crafty cover-ups (BBC4’s documentary, What Are UFOs? Are they out there, and why don't they want to talk to us?)
• Nov: Anti-social media (BBC3’s documentary Blackmailed: The Sextortion Killers. The devastating impact of cyber-crimes.)
• Dec: Manipulated by the Monoform (A look back at the life and career of the radical filmmaker, Peter Watkins, who had recently died.)

2026

• Jan: The luxury gap (Channel 4's documentary series, Inside The World’s Most Luxurious…)
• Feb: Processing progress (Matthew Sweet's documentary, What Happened To Progress?)
• Mar: Reporting on reporting (Panorama's Our Man In Moscow.)
• Apr: Automation and occupations (Panorama's Will Robots Take My Job?)
• May: Theroux the keyhole (Louis Theroux's Netflix documentary, Inside The Manosphere.)
• Jun: Regulations, nations and alienation (As part of the BBC News Scams & Scandals documentary series,The Immigration Fraudsters looks at the prevalence of 'bogus' asylum seekers.) 
• Jul: Grander designs (Kevin McCloud's Channel 4 series, Listed Britain, which details the history of Britain's listed building and British grand architecture.)

Proper Gander: Regulations, nations and alienation (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

BBC News  made sure to emphasise that a Home Office investigation which led to a couple of arrests was prompted by the findings of an episode of its Scams & Scandals documentary series. As its title indicates, The Immigration Fraudsters revealed misconduct among ‘legal advisers’ preparing applications for their clients to remain in the UK. Presenter Billy Kenber tells us ‘we’ve gone undercover to expose this hidden world of illegality’, which means that much of the programme consists of blurry, shaky footage from a concealed camera worn by his colleague. Posing as a foreign national, he visits law firms and advisers who can arrange the necessary paperwork for a claim to the Home Office as an asylum seeker. The covert footage reveals that some advisers gather fabricated evidence to meet the criteria, and Kenber suggests that possibly thousands of people have been granted leave to remain on fraudulent grounds.

Those who make claims for asylum include people who have newly arrived in the UK and others who originally entered under a temporary student or work visa or as the spouse of someone with leave to remain. A successful application confers refugee status, which doesn’t automatically mean permanent entitlement to live in the UK, but permits official employment and being able to claim benefits, apply for ‘social housing’ and use all NHS services. People without official approval to be in the country have ‘no recourse to public funds’, meaning they don’t have access to these aspects of the state. Those in this position without the funds to buy their way out have to rely on cash-in-hand work for an income and are more likely to be trapped into slave labour or homelessness.

For a claim for asylum to be granted by the Home Office, a fear of persecution in the applicant’s country of origin is required. As Ejel Khan of the Muslim LGBT Network explains, homosexuality is illegal in many countries, so fleeing one could be grounds for a gay person applying for asylum in the UK. The undercover reporter meets an immigration adviser who says that for a four-figure fee she can arrange a claim on this basis. He says that he isn’t gay, which doesn’t prevent her from offering to provide a letter declaring that he has had sex with a man, and also membership of the ‘Worcester LGBT Asylum Seekers Group’. The reporter goes to one of its meetings in London which has over 200 attendees, some of whom say next-to-none of them are gay.

The Immigration Fraudsters also covers another route for making asylum claims, on the grounds of being a victim of domestic abuse. This applies in situations where someone has come into the country on a family visa, so their entitlement to remain relies on being in a relationship with their partner who already has official status. If the relationship were to end, the partner under the visa would ordinarily lose their right to remain in the UK, unless they were a victim of domestic abuse. The undercover reporter records an adviser offering to arrange a fake claim (under the 2013 Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession) of being a victim of psychological cruelty from his wife.

The documentary’s producers contacted the dodgy advisers about their activities and received replies bluntly denying any wrongdoing. This wasn’t enough to satisfy the Home Office, hence their announcement of an investigation following the programme’s broadcast, which led to raids by its Immigration Enforcement team and arrests. One way of looking at this is that the BBC, as one branch of the state, was carrying out the ‘due diligence’ which fell within the remit of another branch of the state, the Home Office.

Kenber meets with above-board legal experts who say that people who apply fraudulently make it harder for those with genuine claims, a sentiment echoed by immigration minister Mike Tapp after the raids. The Immigration Fraudsters doesn’t include discussion about the wider context of the issue, beyond quoting some statistics about the number of asylum applications. Having a situation where people lie about being persecuted in order to stay in the UK comes from a combination of factors, each illustrating how society’s capitalist framework alienates us. Fundamentally, the division of the world into countries, as territories of different states, reduces people to being subjects of those states. This accords us differing status in relation to other countries, according to our wealth, nationality, immigration rights and even our family role. Alongside this bureaucratic alienation, there’s also that caused in those states and cultures which are particularly oppressive, including towards anyone who isn’t heterosexual. Understandably, people will want to leave those countries for another where their prospects may be better. Domestic abuse, and especially being trapped in a violent relationship, is another effect of living in a divisive, alienating society. Fleeing these situations means being processed and accorded the status of asylum seeker and, maybe, refugee. While many staff work hard trying to help people navigate the system, the framework they work within is complicated by its legal and financial constraints. This doesn’t prevent some people wanting to manipulate it, leading to fake claims for asylum. While there’s nothing admirable about pretending to be a victim of abuse, those who do would have to be in a dire enough situation to push them towards this. The suspect advisers are exploiting their clients’ grim position, but they’re also products of their circumstances. Presumably, this career pays better than their other options. A capitalist economy encourages people to try to make money out of anything, including desperation. The arrests which followed the programme’s broadcast may lead to some disruption of the network of ‘legal advisers’, and the Home Office is likely to tighten up its legislation. Such measures can’t change the conditions which have created the issue, nor resolve the plight of people seeking asylum, with or without fabricated paperwork.

Mike Foster

A touch of Blaired vision (1994)

TV Review from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watching last month’s Labour Party Conference on BBC was a heady experience. The splendour of the Winter Gardens ballroom. Blackpool, the green-blue space-age set, the forward looking slogan “New Labour, New Britain" boldly outlined for all to see. the pinstripe suits, the floral ties and the presence of that nice young man Mr Blair, all combined to give the effect that was intended by the media men and spin doctors — Labour is back, but this time with a difference. Today it is a Labour Party that you could take home to meet your mother without the worry of it doing anything to embarrass you. This time round father can safely talk to it about how the plants in the greenhouse are coming along. Gone are the bad old days when it wore a donkey-jacket and was the political party from hell spitting on the pavement and farting in public. Labour is back, they say. and it has brought a bunch of chrysanths round and a box of Terry's Old Gold.

Not that Labour hasn’t tried to impress before. In 1992 it tried to sneak its way in the backdoor with claims that it had presents for granny and the young children, but father said he didn't trust it being in same room as his wallet. And father should know — he bitterly remembers being mugged by Labour back in the 1970s. It may all have happened on a dark night but he vividly recalls the bushy eyebrows. Father is not fooled by the new image and won't have Labour in the house again, let alone near his precious greenhouse.

But mother and the kids are not so sure. After all, Labour looks so attractive these days, and says some awfully nice things. It really is a charmer. And it's so boring having the same people round time and again — the bloke from number ten is always popping in with tales of woe. Nobody likes him and even the woman who did the catering for him doesn’t want to see him any more. The chap in the hush puppies from number eleven is no better and father suspects him of siphoning petrol out of the car. Compared to them, Labour seems like a breath of fresh air, but you can never tell can you?

Telling it like it isn’t

Labour is now busy convincing everyone that it is a bad egg that has reformed. Its conference was, in reality, not a conference at all, but an extended Party Political Broadcast aimed at Mr and Mrs Viewer with this end in mind. Its only discernible message was "you have nothing to fear from us — we are on your side”. Capitalists and workers, bosses and unions. Labour loves you all. Co-ordinated by the image-men for the benefit of TV, it was a stream of tepid speeches and meaningless assertions designed to connect with the hopes and, to some extent, prejudices of its potential voting fodder, generally workers whose views are moulded by the self-same media and advertising gurus.

And how the politicians tried to please. TV loves the soundbite, and there were plenty of them to be going on with "Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime", “traditional values in a modern setting", “a strong economy and a just society" rang out like a mantra, and all to demonstrate that Labour has a new user-friendly identity. Pity the poor TV interviewers, bombarded by a stream of verbal diarrhoea for five days. Sheena MacDonald, the anchor presenter, gritted her teeth every time she was forced to interview one of the front-bench robots, while on other occasions, such as when she had to interview John Prescott, she had to visibly stifle laughter at what are now vainglorious attempts at sobriety.

Tony Blair = I’m Tory Plan B

The Chief Robot’s speech was the ultimate triumph of form over content. Expertly delivered with the help of idiot boards, it was 62 minutes of a vision of a capitalist utopia that has never existed and which, with all certainty, will never exist. He even had the cheek to call it socialism, claiming that socialism was based on the understanding that “the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards. and common aims and values". How many in capitalist politics are going to disagree with that? Answer that question and you are well on the way to understanding what Blair and "new Labour" are all about.

But despite the hours of prolonged tedium, the TV coverage of the Conference did provide a few minutes of welcome relief just before Blair's speech. It is then that the Labour Party “Merit Awards" are handed out to long-serving Party members. The first up was an 86-year-old gent who had worked to help the strikers in the General Strike of 1926. To the palpable embarrassment of those around him, he delivered a speech which denounced the market economy and the world capitalist system and then singled out the drug religion as one of the greatest evils in modern society. Quite what he had been doing in the Labour Party for seventy years wasn’t clear, but it certainly took the cheesy grin off Blair’s face. If only Sheena MacDonald had done us all a favour and interviewed the old guy afterwards she would have found herself confronted by a critical intelligence for the first time all week. 

Dave Perrin

Proper Gander: Automation and occupations (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reporter Richard Bilton is waiting on a sidewalk in Los Angeles as a couple of boxes on wheels trundle up towards him and then carry on past, with another one stopping by his feet. Lifting its lid, he finds the cheeseburger he ordered online, delivered by a robot rather than a human, and while he’s explaining this, a driverless taxi cab glides along the road, identical to one he tried out in San Francisco. Thousands of automated servants like these are already operating in several cities across America, with robotaxis scheduled to arrive in London before the end of 2026. In his edition of Panorama (BBC One), Bilton asked the question Will Robots Take My Job? and looked for an answer among academics and tech companies leading in robotics.

More complex types of robots than those on wheels are still in development, some of which promise to be particularly useful for otherwise difficult tasks, such as one designed to enter burning buildings. The humanoid robots featured in the documentary don’t attempt to look like people beyond their basic shape, with varying designs of cold, blank-faced heads reminiscent of something from Doctor Who. While prototypes can do backflips and dance, their immediate descendants are likely to end up with less vivacious careers as warehouse operatives. So far, these robots aren’t autonomous, but are controlled by a technician twiddling a joystick, and can only perform within a set of limited pre-programmed movements. Teddy Haggerty, CEO of Robostore, talks about turning this apparent restriction into a business model, emphasising the ‘remote’ in remote control. He suggests that these robots could be used in a warehouse in one country, directed by workers based in another country. The important point is that these workers are employed for lower wages than the going rate wherever the warehouse is located. Even with outlay for the upkeep of the robots, this would reduce costs to the company, maximising profits. This tactic is nothing new, akin to placing a call centre in a country where labour is cheaper than the places where the calls are going to. The robotics companies’ representatives Bilton meets excitedly describe how their humanoid robots will do the dull jobs and chores so we don’t have to. Their enthusiasm is understandable, given the ever-expanding applications of this technology, especially now Artificial Intelligence is being integrated. As James Bessen of Boston University explains, this enthusiasm gets channelled into hype. Sleek promotional videos and flashy choreographed demonstrations are intended to attract investment. Building a profitable business model is the priority, rather than providing what’s really needed and wanted by people, including the employees involved.

The only workers featured in the programme whose jobs are being directly threatened by AI robots are the taxi drivers Bilton speaks with, who aren’t impressed by the supposed merits of driverless cabs. Fast-food delivery robots have started to replace costlier people on motorbikes, and if Haggerty’s idea gains traction, more human warehouse workers will be made redundant. AI-enabled robots are also learning specialist roles such as welding, and many office duties can already be carried out quicker and cheaper by AI analysing data and drafting strategies. According to a 2024 report from the International Monetary Fund, an estimated 70 per cent of UK workers are in occupations with tasks which could be performed or enhanced by AI.

However, robots aren’t yet sophisticated enough to be swapped for large numbers of staff. Professor Aaron Ames of the California Institute of Technology points out that even the action of opening a door is currently beyond their grasp. Another reason why the growth of AI robots may not lead to mass unemployment, quoted by Ali Kashani, CEO of Serve Robotics, is that new technology expands the economy and creates more new jobs than those it supplants. Bessen agrees: ‘it’s just a mistake to think that this technology comes in and replaces the humans and everything else stays the same’, citing how next-to no occupations were made obsolete by the growth of automation in the mid-20th century. Although they don’t say it themselves, this stance reflects how capitalist production adapts according to what is likely to be profitable. For example, driverless taxis have reached the stage where the expense of manufacturing and running them is falling below current costs for traditional cabs, such as drivers’ wages, which means they are more likely to turn a profit for the companies behind them. As also shown by Robostore’s cynical idea to outsource warehouse staff, financial prerogatives override the interests of workers in how the technology is applied. Whether this leads to unemployment or creates new jobs elsewhere, it’s still in the alienating context of capitalism’s labour market.

In a socialist society, the use of AI and robotics would be guided by practicalities, as financial considerations would no longer exist. Without the framework of employment, people and robots wouldn’t be in competition, so it wouldn’t be that a robot would ‘take someone’s job’. For the same reason, people wouldn’t risk hardship if a robot or AI did tasks instead of them. It’s possible that many aspects of how society functions would be automated, reducing the amount of labour people would have to do, freeing up more time for what they want to do. AI (or whatever it becomes in the future) could monitor what needs to be produced and trigger this to happen, with robots doing the practical work. Communities and the organisations they run would be able to decide how technology is incorporated into industries and services based on people’s requirements and the circumstances at the time. The robots shown on Panorama have this potential, but as this technology is developing in capitalism, it will instead be shaped according to what benefits companies’ shareholders.

Mike Foster

Between the Lines: The Day War Broke Out (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Day War Broke Out

This was the most planned for war in history. The cameras were waiting in the desert, eager for the first fireworks display. CNN reporters locked themselves in their hotel room and described the bombing of Baghdad as it started, even poking their microphone out the window so that the viewers could hear the big bangs. This was televised warfare — murder by media.

When the bombing started (16 January) the TV reporters affected an air of surprise, as if the whole shooting match was out of the blue. Had they not spent five months previous to this telling the workers that such mass slaughter was inevitable and then that it would begin on the first night after 15 January?

The second night of the war saw the first Iraqi attack on Israel. CNN reported that it was a chemical missile attack. This misinformation was reported for over three hours. The CNN reporter in Jerusalem, asked to describe the attack, recalled hearing a huge explosion close to his office. It later turned out that there was no missile attack on Jerusalem.

The ITN reporter, trapped in his sealed room in Tel Aviv and reporting that there had been a chemical missile attack, was asked what Israeli TV was saying. He replied that he could not tell us because the TV messages were in Hebrew — the language of Israel. What qualifications do you need to be an ITV reporter? An Israeli journalist on the BBC was asked to tell the viewers how scared he felt. He replied that he was in his flat with his family whom he rarely managed to be with and that they were watching Monty Python on TV. Were they the only ones, we asked ourselves.

Agreement Time

We all know that there is little difference between capitalist politicians. In time of war the little turns into nothing.

On Question Time (BBC1, 10.10pm, 17 January) the two panels of politicians did nothing but tell each other how much they were on the same side. Hattersley, Labour’s deputy leader, praised Major for his war leadership; Clarke, the Tory Minister, said how pleasing it was to see all parties united in Britain's hour of need; Kaufman, Labour's Foreign Affairs man, was so eager to support the war that he sounded more like Thatcher than Major does; Ashdown, the Liberal leader, let it ^be known that he was the only party leader to have served in Kuwait as a'' marine. One woman in the audience heckled, saying that they were all boring politicians saying the same thing. The audience had a jolly good laugh — all good clean English fun.

Three days later the BBC issued an edict to all disc jockeys: no pro-peace records could be played while the war is on. Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance is now banned in British broadcasting. Playful heckling of capitalist politicians who have the whole of Question Time in which to spew out their vicious pro-war filth is permissible, but lyrics which might just change workers’ minds - No fear.

The Con that kills

Remember those cosy TV ads about joining the army and seeing the world? Didn’t they make you want to rush to the recruiting office and learn to be a chef? Those T.A. recruitment ads used to tell wage slaves how they could give up a few weekends and have fun playing "Bang, bang, you're dead" games.

There was even one newspaper ad which showed the Socialist Party platform in Hyde Park. London, and suggested that if you join the army you would be becoming a sort of special protector of free speech. What they did not tell you was about the chemical weapons, the sweltering desert heat, the body bags, the pointless murdering and being attacked all in the name of oil profits.

A war for their class

This war is being fought so that capitalists can stay rich. Every wage slave in uniform who dies, including the poor conscripts in the Iraqi killing force, will die in vain. It is a war, as all wars, about capitalist power - on this occasion, the power to own and control oil production.

Alas. Channel Four's Class By Class (Fridays. 8pm) did not have the first clue what class is about. The presenter, Ray Gosling, perpetuated the stale old fallacy that class is a matter of lifestyle.

A month earlier BBC's Forty Minutes was about prostitution in the King's Cross area of London. It was an unpretentious documentary which made no claim to offer any grand theory of class. A number of prostitute women were interviewed who made it abundantly clear that their reason for doing their dirty work was that they needed money — they were poor.

Also interviewed on the programme was a socialist, David Hines, who has written an excellent play about prostitution (it is called Bondage and is highly recommended). He explained that hookers were no different from taxi drivers — both had to sell themselves on the market to the first bidder. This is true of all workers: wage slavery is prostitution.

Having said that, there is prostitution and prostitution, and there is something more dignified about selling quick sexual thrills or taxi rides than spreading war propaganda.

                                                                                                                             Steve Coleman