The first recording today is the second episode in the series The Genius of Charles Darwin – The Fifth Ape.
Richard Dawkins looks at Evolution by natural selection, and asks whether human society must inevitably be shaped by the same forces. He’s fairly clear up front how he stands. “Natural selection is the driving force of our evolution. But that doesn’t mean that society ought to be run on Darwinian lines. As a scientist, I’m thrilled by natural selection. But as a human being, I abhor it as a principle for organizing society.”
He speaks to Richard Leakey about his discoveries of the earliest human ancestors, found in Kenya.
He speaks to Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, in a church that’s just across the road from where Dawkins was born. He’s running a campaign to stop a museum displaying the skulls of early hominids. He doesn’t believe man is descended from a shared ancestor with the other apes, mainly because he doesn’t understand what natural selection and evolutionary theory actually means.
Looking at the selfish side of the selfish gene theory, he gives the example of the strangler fig. “It started life high up in the tree from a seed, perhaps dropped by a food-eating monkey. It then sent roots down towards the ground in order to get nourishment from the ground. And then these roots proliferate all around the original tree and strangle it to death. Eventually, the original tree will die and the fig will be left standing on its own, having usurped its position in the sun.” I have never trusted figs, except when they’re safely contained in the delicious for of a Fig Roll.
Eric Beinhoffer talks about how social darwinism has often been used to justify unfettered capitalism, and leads people to believe they are business visionaries. “Well, not to take away from the talent that these individuals may have, but if you imagine a room full of people flipping coins, if the room’s big enough, one of them is going to get ten heads in a row. And then if you ask that person, what did you do? They’ll say, well, I’m an expert coin flipper, I got my wrist just right. And we see the same thing in business.”
The spectre of Eugenics is addressed. “But it’s important to say eugenics is not Darwinism. Eugenics is not a version of natural selection. Hitler, despite popular legend, was not a Darwinist. Every farmer, horticulturalist or pigeon fancier knew how to breed for desired outcomes. Eugenicists like Hitler borrowed from breeders. What Darwin uniquely realized was that nature can play the role of breeder. Darwin has been wrongly tainted.”
Steven Pinker talks about how the complexities of the brain, and the specific behaviours the different parts of the brain control, are all products of evolution.
Dawkins talks about the importance of attracting sexual partners is often a big part of evolution. I love his was of illustrating this.
He talks to Claus Rodgaard, about the type of donor women choose from his sperm bank. “One of the donors that have been really popular is actually the nicest guy. I don’t know how you put that in a formal, but he’s the nicest guy. He’s not the smartest guy. He’s not the best looking guy.” “How do they know he’s the nicest guy?” “He’s actually written a really good extended profile about himself. I’ve actually met the guy. I can tell you the profile actually checks out. He is a really nice guy.”
He talks to Frans de Waal, who is a critic of Dawkins’ Selfish Gene theory. “Let’s say there’s a big fight, someone loses the fight. Very often, another one will go over to them and put an arm around them, try to calm them down, groom them. We call that consolation behavior, and actually that’s common enough that you can collect data on it.” But the discussion suggests there’s actually not very much difference between both of their positions.
He talks to people doing actual atruism. “Well, I was a war child, so we never had a lot of food, and that’s why I’ve always tried to look after these best I can. You know, and I think, well, if they’re hungry, I’ll feed them.”
Here’s the whole episode.
Media Centre Description: Richard Dawkins presents a guide to Charles Darwin and his revolutionary theory of natural selection, which Dawkins considers the most important idea ever to occur to a human mind. Professor Dawkins elaborates on the Theory of Evolution’s suggestion that humans are merely the fifth ape.
Recorded from Channel 4 on Monday 11th August 2008 19:58
After this, the recording ends with the start of Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan.
The next recording starts with the end of Britain’s Missing Top Model.
Then it’s the first episode of Spooks: Code 9. This is a spin-off set in the future, featuring a younger cast than the actual show, so I bet it will be filled by lots of actors I just can’t tell apart.
Oh no, they’re not going to ruin the greatest post-war event that London’s ever had?
Yes they are.
We meet the team, with their MI-5 interviews, starting with Jez (Heshima Thompson). “Why would MI5 be interested in recruiting somebody with your criminal record?” “Your straight guys didn’t exactly save the world, did they?” I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the only black team member is the one with a criminal record.
Rachel (Ruta Gedmintas): “I’ve seen the reports. Terrorists are getting younger, so you’re probably looking for younger spies. Am I right?”
Rob (Andrew Knott): “I was going to be a doctor and then I realised I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore.” “And what? You want to be some kind of action hero, aren’t you?” “Now you mention it.”
Vik (Christopher Simpson): “Protect my country. It’s got to be what you want to hear, right? Funnily enough it actually happens to be the truth.”
Kylie (Georgia Moffett): “I was far enough away from the blast not to get burned, but the radiation made me sick. I just want to help while I still have time. I know the security services have to change and I want to be part of that change and make sure no one ever does this to our country again.”
There’s an opening in a nightclub, which immediately puts me off, it’s one of the things I always hate, never having frequented them much when I was younger. And everything is shot in the shaky-cam style that always suggests to me that they didn’t have the budget to actually plan shots. And even the shots in the nightclub are shot with very tight close-ups with no hint at the overall geography of the location. This all smells of a very low budget.
There’s two operations running at the same time, with Jez and Vik at a food supply compound. Fights break out at both locations.
Rachel is running the ops remotely, with a senior agent, Hannah, who, like Rachel, is blonde, so I’m going to struggle keeping these two straight.
Jez and Vik are helped by a stranger, who turns out to be the final member of the team, Charlie (Liam Boyle).
There’s some banter about what form Charlie’s initiation will take. “You got the blowtorch?” “I thought sexual humiliation came first…” Or we could go back to the house, have a few beers, and you can tell us how you got here.” Charlie says “Sounds like a much better idea, although I’m not much of a drinker, really.” To which Rob says, rather angrily, “So, what do you bring to the party?” which makes it seem like drinking a lot is a core MI-5 skillset. Charlie answers “Well, I can prove Fermat’s last theorem” which doesn’t seem like as big a boast as the writers possibly think, since Fermat’s last theorem was proved in 1995 by Andrew Wiles, as I wrote about here. Maybe Charlie watched the Horizon documentary about it on iPlayer.
Hannah is visited by a man called Neil who’s sneering at her team. “Oh, look. They’ve made a little diagram. And here we have a revolutionary new structure of field offices, staffed by new recruits with only one year’s experience.” Except that he doesn’t look like he’s long out of his teens either. He’s ex-MI-5, having left for the much more lucrative private sector, and he wants Hannah to join him, but she’s not interested.
Jez doesn’t join the drink party. Instead he’s at a processing location, asking for new information about his missing family. “Weren’t you here last week?” “I’m here every week.”
The team have to prepare for a visit from the Prime Minister, and they’ve been following people who might be trying to assassinate him. The show is trying some things that I’m not sure work, like they occasionally overlay a Union Flag over someone’s face. Not sure where they’re going with this. They also use a waving flag as a scene transition, that just feels busy to me. This show is not winning me over.
They identify the hitman, a 15 year old hoodie they encountered in the food depot, and they know he’s been supplied with a high velocity rifle. Hannah goes to her boss, Sarah Yates (Lorraine Borroughs) to recommend that the PM’s visit is postponed for 24 hours, but her boss is dismissive of the idea. So this is going to be the kind of show where everyone’s at each other’s throats, another trope I don’t like much.
They locate where the assassin is, and go to pick him up. Charlie is worried because he’s opening the hotel window. “Why open the window if he’s only casing?” Rachel ignores his worry, but just after that, Hannah comes through the checkpoint into the square, and the gunman shoots her.
Jez and Kylie go after the gunman, but he ends up falling from a high roof despite Jez trying to hold him by his hands.
Hannah’s dead, and she was the intended target of the killer. Sarah Yates wants to bring in a senior officer to investigate. Charlie says no. “You’re wasting time. We are wasting time discussing this and will certainly be wasting time briefing another officer to get him up to speed. MI5 created this new structure. Don’t you believe in it? We can deal with this. All we need is time.” “How long?” “Five and a half hours.” “Five and a half?” “Three hundred and thirty minutes.” “Oh, you sound very sure.” “I am.” “All right. Five and a half hours is how long it would take me to find someone in long trousers anyway.” When she leaves, they ask “Why not six hours or, I don’t know, longer?” “She wouldn’t give in to us. The five and a half put her on the back foot. She was thinking more about the half than the five.”
They lean on one of the people from the food depot, and pretend to be part of the gunman’s gang, telling him they want more money for the death of their assassin. He finds the one who paid for the hit – it’s the smarmy Neil who was recruiting Hannah. That’s a very dangerous HR department they’ve got. And see what I mean about the flags. I hope it’ll have significance.
They chase him through a shopping arcade into another disused building. They can’t see him but they can hear him. “I’m an ex MI-5 officer, trust me. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” “We know a lot more than you think.” “I doubt that. I advise you to walk away now.” But after a far too long sequence of people looking serious as they hold their guns straight out in front of them and walk through doors dramatically, they find Neil dead.
Yates makes Charlie the team leader. He’s not sure he wants it. “If it makes you feel better, we can put the term interim in front of your job title.” “I do feel better with interim, actually.”
He meets up with the team. The only person they have that knows anything is the man who led them to Neil. Rachel tells them that he’s dead too. “Flynn’s dead. Topped himself before we could ask a single question.” “Somebody got to him as well.” “Every possible tongue has now been silenced.”
As he’s walking home, a man comes up to him and gives him a message from Hannah. “I’m an old friend. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t want to know. Just doing what Hannah asked me to do. Now I have. I’m done.” It’s a thumb drive.
Look, I think I have to be honest here. After about five minutes of this programme, I was thinking it’s possibly one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen. The writing was weak, the characters non-existent, and a lot of the performances very poor, like listening to people reading the lines for the first time. The direction is all shaky-cam, cuts and close-ups, anything that’s not in an exterior location is in a cramped small space. And one of the actors’ faces is far too small. I don’t really like slagging things off, but this really wasn’t doing anything for me. I’ll blame the whole BBC Three mindset, that nobody young will watch older people on TV, like all those geriatrics in the original Spooks. Honestly? MI-High is a much better show than this is.
Media Centre Description: Drama series set in 2013. After London has been evacuated following a nuclear bomb and the country’s power base has shifted north, six new MI5 recruits take up the challenge of gathering intelligence in the fightback. Charlie Green’s first mission with Field Office 19 is to foil an apparent assassination plot against the British prime minister. Charlie finds himself in uncharted territory when he unwittingly becomes team leader and is given five and half hours to track down the would-be killer.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Tuesday 12th August 2008 02:58
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Tuesday 12th August 2008 03:00
After this there’s a trail for the Spooks Code 9 online experience.
Then the recording ends with the start of the next episode.
The final recording today continues from the previous on with episode 2 of Spooks: Code 9. The first thing I notice is that this episode is written by Howard Overman who wrote Misfits and the BBC’s adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently which I enjoyed, so perhaps the writing will be a little less rudimentary.
The episode opens with agents in the field. At least, I think this is Rob but I genuinely can’t be sure. His face does look small enough. He’s in some sort of facility taking video of dead bodies.
These scenes are intercut with scenes of Jez having sex with a woman who turns out to be one of his informers.
At the University of Bridgewater, there’s an unauthorised broadcast on the emergency broadcast system, showing what looks like the video that Rob was filming earlier, along with a caption saying “M.O.D. = Ministry of Death”. Jez and Vik are there.
Charlie guesses the thumbdrive password. A thumbdrive prepared by Hannah and given directly to him, and it took him ages to guess that the password was his own name.
They find CCTV of a woman using a laptop near the scene. Her face looks familiar… Vik recognises her as Kate, one of their assets. Jez has to admit he’s been sleeping with her.
The unauthorised broadcast has revealed the existence of Camp Windsmere. The Head of MI-5 denies that the video of the bodies is real though. Side note: I don’t know why they’re watching video on a 4:3 screen, or why that screen isn’t letterboxing the video, but squashing the aspect ratio. This is supposed to be 2013 for God’s sake.
Aha! The small-faced Doctor who was filming the bodies meets up with Kate (or whatever her name really is, as she’s been using a fake ID). So it wasn’t Rob, the small-faced doctor on the MI-5 team. Well done, casting director, for being confusing.
The real Rob is contacted by a detective who asks him about a man he was training with. “Yeah, it’s Julian Nelson. We were training to be doctors at the same hospital.” “I’m afraid he’s dead. It seems he may have taken an overdose. Had he seemed depressed to you?” “I don’t know. No, not really.” “I understand you also knew Mr. Nelson’s girlfriend.” “Emma, yes.” “We’re trying to track her down. Have you seen her since the attack?” No, no. It seems like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for a suicide.” “We’re not entirely convinced it was a suicide.” I really don’t know how much we’re supposed to be following this brand new information unrelated to anything else we’ve seen.
The terrorist sends another fake evacuation broadcast to a railway station, leading to a deadly crush.
Jez and Charlie have a talk. Charlie asks him flat out if there was anything going on between him and the mysterious Kate and he admits he was seeing her, and she got the encryption keys from his PDA. “I fucked up.” “Yeah, um, that wasn’t very smart.” “Those people down at the station, it’s down to me.” “No, that’s down to her.” At last someone says this out loud in a drama. I’m so sick of villains holding guns to people’s heads and saying “If they die it’s your fault” to the hero, and not once do they ever say “No it’s your fault, you’re pulling the trigger.”
Rob goes undercover at a hostel where they think Kate obtained her fake IDs. He manages to make everyone suspicious by showing her picture around, and asking where he can get fake IDs, attracting the attention of the other small-faced doctor who’s working with Kate. So they rough him up a bit.
That doesn’t pan out, but Rachel got information from a soldier who works at Camp Windsmere so they were able to identify their terrorist as Laura Daniels. her brother was one of the bodies on the video, so she’s out for revenge.
They identify the small faced Doctor that duffed up Rob, and also find out that Laura has been trying to procure explosives. They grab the doctor and he tells them that Laura is at the university.
They try to evacuate the building, but Laura cancels the alert.
Jez faces off against her.
But it’s Charlie who kills her.
Later Charlie shows Rachel what he found on Hannah’s thumbdrive. “If you’re watching this, I must be dead. Which probably means they got to me before I got to them. I believe there’s a traitor within MI5. I don’t know who. But I believe this person is directly responsible for the attack on London.”
Media Centre Description: Drama series set in 2013. After London has been evacuated following a nuclear bomb and the country’s power base has shifted north, six new MI5 recruits take up the challenge of gathering intelligence in the fightback. Protestors hack into Emergency Communications System and broadcast a video of dead inmates at a government prison. MI5 publicly deny the footage is real, prompting the terrorists to set off a series of false alerts. Charlie discovers MI5 corruption relating to the London bombing.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Tuesday 12th August 2008 03:50
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Tuesday 12th August 2008 03:50
After this, there’s a trail for Don’t Tell the Bride.
Then the recording ends with BBC Three closing down.
Here’s the ad breaks in The Genius of Charles Darwin.
Advert:
- trail: Don’t Blame The Builder
- moneysupermarket.com
- Hiscox
- The Big Yellow Self Storage Company
- E.on
- Smart Car
- trail: The Secret Millionaire
- Olay Regenerist
- Hyundai
- Neutrogena T/Gel
- National Express
- More Than
- trail: The Perfect Vagina
- Mercedes-Benz
- Credit Expert
- National Express
- Just for Men
- Scottish Widows
- trail: Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan
- trail: Generation Next
- trail: Big Brother
- Mitsubishi
- trail: Don’t Blame The Builder