Time warps for D-Day

This rather odd D-Day tribute included weather presenter Sian Lloyd in military uniform

5 April 2012

D-Day Despatches ITV1

Ever since the cowardly French refused to participate in our glorious mission to destroy Saddam's non-existent weapons and liberate the long-suffering and downtrodden oil of Iraq, I have refused to have anything French in my house.

For more than a year, my French windows have been nailed shut, I only cook Freedom fries and freedom toast in the kitchen, I've banned French letters from the bedroom, and I've warned the neighbours that I will automatically napalm anyone seen French kissing in their garden.

What's more, I also took our German shepherd dog back to the kennels, and last month, when the perfidious Spanish pulled their troops out, I smashed up my Spanish Yamaha guitar and cut down the Spanish cedar in the yard.

Come on England! We don't need Europe. Let's stick two British fingers up at untrustworthy Johnny Wog, revive the Empire, reintroduce the groat, and enjoy once again our inalienable ancestral right to quaff a flagon of malmsey or a butt of sack (or even a sackbut).

We're still a great nation! We've still got the Falkland Islands and Rockall! Honestly, sometimes I wonder who won the sodding war, really I do.

To judge from the more excitable sections of the media, such jingoistic views are presently on the increase, but thankfully the No to Europe party is fronted by Robert Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins (those twin triumphs of t he embalmer's art), thereby ensuring its speedy demise.

If ever they got their way, such vile people would doubtless tilt the Channel Tunnel downwards and use it as a sewer to dump on France, forgetting that 60 years ago our two nations fought side by side to rid the continent of a genuine threat to world civilisation.

However, the schedules are currently crammed with commemorations of the 1944 Normandy landings (in which the French Resistance played a vital but under-acknowledged role), and ITV1 presumably thought it had come up with a brilliant new angle by commissioning D-Day Despatches, which covers those historic events in a modern News at Ten style.

But sadly, they'd forgotten that, even on a good night, News at Ten has always looked several decades behind the times anyway.

Using old footage in a modern context inevitably raises questions about style and consistency, and last night's first instalment singularly failed to resolve any of them.

"It's the second of June, 1944," said John Suchet, dressed in unambiguously 2004 clothing and standing in a contemporary ITN-style studio clutching a plastic clipboard, so why was weather presenter Sian Lloyd dressed in a Second World War military uniform, and pointing at a map with Forties' graphics.

Worse, in a misguided attempt to blend old and new images, cheap electronic film scratch had been applied to colour video images of location reporters, whose dress and demeanour suggested that they too were unsure whether they were addressing us from the past or the present.

Add to that the self-conscious and unconvincing way that the journalists tried to play themselves (newsreaders always sound fake when they're acting their role instead of practising their profession), and it's easy to see why the Radio Times described this as "a mock report."

Despite the modern trappings, the essence of the programme was little different to the dozens of other D-Day tributes, with old newsreel footage of troops gathering on the south coast, aircraft manufacture going into overdrive, and the Soviet army bearing down on Germany from the East.

However, there were some domestic stories, such as the worryingly large number of fatalities on British roads (567 killed in April 1944 alone), and the war effort going pearshaped when troops in Kent were blown up by their own detonators (incidentally, what shape do poor old pears go when a mishap occurs?).

Even an attempt to create a live feel by saying "some news just in" was misplaced, because breaking news stories aren't usually accompanied by lengthy and detailed analysis, complete with footage of events that hasn't yet happened, in this case the bombing of French coastal towns and civilians during the forthcoming landing.

That's an uncomfortable fact that's conveniently forgotten nowadays by most British historians, who also like to present Dunkirk as a glorious national triumph.

Try telling that to my great uncle Cedric, who fled back across the Channel from Dunkirk on a squeaky pedalo. This was a bellicose little programme, made by a bellicose little production company (Optomen, which also made Gordon Ramsay's bellicose little C4 series), and reminds us all of what a bellicose little island this can be.

Stopping Hitler in his tracks was a feat for which we should all be grateful, but why are we all still obsessed with telling each other about how wonderful it all was during the Second World War, living off owl soup while the Queen Mother was kneeling down and redding the doorsteps of cheerful cockney folk in the East End, while the bombs were actually hitting her on the head (just nobody mention the one-way ticket to Canada jammed in her pocket)?

Oddly, most of the people I know who lived and fought through that period seldom mention the war at all, regardingit as a regrettable necessity-unlike the wholly avoidable-mess we've now landed ourselves in in the Middle East.

They know that, in truth, there's nothing glorious about war, and as we all hurtle towards WWIII, television should remember that the truth that makes us free is not the comforting celebration of our victories. For the most part, it's the truth we'd prefer not to hear.

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