The News Agenda

Never mind Brand and Ross, this is the real entertainment news (and this is the really interesting bit).

Three-Michelin-Star Tele

I've only ever got hooked on two--ahem--reality TV shows: Musicality and Masterchef. Both, of course, are basically talent shows with a reality TV element injected into them. (Perhaps we could call them soft reality TV rather than the hard reality [sic] TV of, say, Big Brother. Who I'm not watching. Ever. Sorry.) Both also lack the glitz, pizzazz and superhype of other talent shows such as The Zzzzz Factor, Any Idea Will Do or How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Ratings?. Instead of hype, the focus in the two Ms is/was on unadorned talent, hard work and, in the case of Masterchef certainly, sheer creativity.

Another crucial element both programmes--certainly in the latter stages of the competitions--is the narrative arc of the contestants' development. The lack of glamour and the narrative focus together give the impression of following a real personal emotional and experiential journey, as opposed to observing the manufacture of another identical pop unit for market consumption. That even goes for Musicality, where the ultimate prize was to perform in a West End show. That narrative arc is what hooked me. That and, in the case of Masterchef, the madcap, prodigious brilliance and innovation of Emily's dishes.

Another thing: in one sense, Masterchef shouldn't work. The crux and climax of a programme is the contestants' cooking, which only the judges are able to assess. The viewer can assess presentation, of course, but not flavour, seasoning, consistency or texture. That's the opposite of Musicality or the phone-in voting contests, where everyone has seen and heard the contestants' performances and everyone has an opinion on them.

But perhaps that's the genius of Masterchef as reality TV: it forces the viewer to imaginge what the dishes must taste like. In the other shows, the viewer's imagination is uncalled-for. In fact, it's cancelled out, particularly by the higher-budget, glitz and glamour end of the genre. Masterchef therefore has soul in a way that not even Musicality, for all its emotional journey, could manage. Perhaps that's why I finished watching the grand final last night and felt that drive to write returning with fresh vigour.

Oh Do Desist, Dear Boy

Not that I'm given to watching Sunday morning TV, but I happened to see the art historian Brian Sewell pontificating disdainfully about modern art in churches on BBC 1 this morning. I assume the item, which was part of the Heaven & Earth show, was a brief televisual extension of his BBC Radio 3 show for Christmas week, the rather pompously entitled "Divine Art", which I missed, at least partly by design.

Sewell maintained that "we must insist" on a "spiritual" quality to religious art. The latter term seemed to mean visual art associated directly with Christian worship, which seems a remarkably narrow conception in today's society. However, although the rallying cry might not seem particularly controversial at first sight, it is hopelessly vague. Sewell did not define the "spiritual quality", but as far as I could gather, it is something to do with a sense of mysticism (a term Sewell used), transendence or the ethereal. From his reaction to the Henry Moore piece he lambasted, it certainly seemed to rule out any strong physiciality.

This is one of the most irritating things about Sewell's approach. Christianity in its orthodox forms--and remember, all the pieces he considered were for Christian places of worship--is founded on the belief that God became human in Christ or, to express it slightly differently, that Christ was fully human as well as fully pine. Therefore, the physical is as essential to the faith as the spiritual and ought be as strong an element in Christian art as the spiritual. God's transendence and immanence must be held in tension, if not necessarily in any single artwork then at least across the totality of Christian art.

The other irritatant was that Sewell didn't have anything positive at all to say about the modern and contemporary art he examined, except the grudging acceptance that Moore had at least considered the architectural setting of his altar, unlike another artist he critiqued. Granted, some of his criticisms were justified, but if he had lifted his head above his prejudices and ventured north, he might have found something to shake his disdain in Alison Watt's wonderful, award-winning painting Still in Old St Pauls Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. In this piece, presence and absence, the physical and the spiritual, death and resurrection meet naturally and powerfully. Surely even Brian Sewell could not fail to be moved.