I Love My Country

Someone made a reference the other day to the shortlived BBC quiz/entertainment show "I Love My Country", which was broadcast for a month in 2013.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_My_Country_(UK_TV_series) I remembered as a result that I'd written a review of the first episode, though never did anything with it. I don't know whether to feel broadly pleased that the show was a flop, or disturbed that it was made. I suppose short of disturbing, the show was an interesting response to the overt nationalist turn of the last 5 to 10 year, one that obviously attempted to respond to and be part of that turn, while at the same time articulating its nationalism in terms (multiculturalism and pop culture) that date to the last, rather softer, form of nationalism of 'Cool Britannia'. The contradiction might be what did for the show. 

Not Just the Title of the Show

Last Saturday BBC1 broadcast the first episode of “I Love My Country,” a Britain-themed quiz show hosted by Gabby Logan, with Frank Skinner and Mickey Flanagan.  Two teams, led by Skinner and Flanagan and cheered on by a studio audience inexplicably wearing novelty wigs, have to prove their patriotic credentials by answering stupid questions loosely related to a drunk BBC commissioner’s idea of Britain. The winning team is presented with the ‘I Love My Country’ souvenir plate. I’m not making this up.

Sophisticated it ain't. At one point contestants have to guess the weight of the Mayor of High Wycombe, in imperial measurements, naturally. (The Mayor appears in person for this purpose.) Sexist jokes are met with roars of laughter and applause. Flanagan wins a standing ovation from the audience for identifying that P _ T_ _ B _ _ _ _ _ _ was spelling out Peterborough. He then has to indicate its location by placing a Yorkshire pudding on a giant map of Britain. Afterwards Skinner has to find Lickey End (cor blimey.)

It's kind of inventive though, in its way. The musical interludes from Jamelia and the house band are particularly good. At one point they play three classic British tunes and the contestants have to guess the celebrity to which they refer. (For the record: The Who – My Generation, The Artic Monkeys – I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor, and Motorhead – Ace of Spades. That was Bruce Forsyth. No, me neither.)

Mostly the show reads like another piece of Saturday night junk telly for all the family – complete with a sing along to The Beatles’ ‘All You Need is Love’ – and it largely conforms to the conventions of the genre. Skinner and Flanagan have some fake-spontaneous banter with the other guests, and Skinner makes several ‘jokes’ about the surname of Casualty actress Charlotte Salt. (They are, if anything, worse than you might be imagining.)

The BBC have quite self-consciously tried to present an inclusive notion of what Britain is, decorating the studio with banal symbols like Stonehenge (think This Is Spinal Tap), and celebrating Notting Hill Carnival as a British tradition. The overall tone though is represented more aptly by the opening credits, when a squealy electric guitar solo picks out the melody of 'God Save The Queen' before seguing in to generic rock while black cabs, sticks of rock, fish and chips, lions rampant and London buses float over a red, white and blue background. It's Our Britain, as the Sun would have it. [http://politicalscrapbook.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/the-sun-our-britain.jpg] When you think about the crappy symbolism of monarchical-nationalism suddenly the I Love My Country commemorative plate makes a lot of sense.

At one point Flanagan stands up straight and gives a mock salute when mentioning Kate Middleton, but that's the only, brief, hint of subversion, to which the producer's cut doesn't draw attention. Mostly though this is the BBC blowing with the wind, happily playing its role as regime broadcaster, following on from their recent reality show on scroungers, 'We All Pay Your Benefits', with Nick and Margaret.

Logan begins by announcing: “Welcome to ‘I Love My Country,’ not just the title of the show but a statement of fact. Tonight we’ll be putting our teams’ Britishness to the test.” She closes in a hail of rapturous applause from the studio audience, thanking all the participants as the theme music plays. “They all love their country,” she says, by way of praise, “and so do I.”