By MICHELE HEWITSON
Bookenz is back. And that, particularly given the demise of Bill Ralston's lively Backch@t, ought to be reason for celebration.
But, oh dear, Bookenz (TV One, 10 tonight) does rather make the world of books seem a tedious and trivial place. It's so teachy, too.
Kate de Goldi and guests spend a lot of time sitting, awkwardly, around a table. De Goldi gets to hold up books; guests get to intelligently debate their merits or faults. In theory. What actually happens is that the viewer could be forgiven for wondering whether they'd strayed into an episode of Playschool Talks About Some Lovely Books.
Last week Big Ted (Warwick Roger) and Little Ted (Angus Gillies) were asked along to talk about sports writing. Now, this should have been lively. Roger is knowledgeable and often amusingly caustic on the topic; Gillies penned the Matthew Ridge reveal-all-bio. But the debate never started, mainly because de Goldi's premise - "Sports books are huge sellers at Christmas. Why then do some of the critics say they're crap?" - was intended to be provocative but was simply stupid. Some critics say some of the sports books are crap, because some of them are crap. End of argument?
Not quite.
De Goldi: "But how can you argue the fact that it sells so well?"
Roger: "You can't."
Quite.
Next we went west, on the steam train for the annual Going West literary festival which "has just finished for another year." Which makes it rather old news. Still, we did see Maurice Gee riding through the country he's written about; where buildings his father had helped to build still stood. Except we mostly watched people sitting on a train talking about why they enjoyed the festival which had finished, and people standing around in a hall.
Gee on a train talking about the country he regards as his "own country" as he, and we, watched that country from the train window - now that would have been worth staying up for.
But we chugged on to a discussion of whether Stephen King's on-line novel is crap or not. It is, all agreed. Despite de Goldi having earlier told us that "it's a truism that nobody ever agrees about books." Really?
This by way of boasting that Bookenz has three reviewers whereas "the local review in the newspaper is only one person's opinion."
Panel discussions about books can work. Gordon McLauchlan's monthly book club on National Radio is an example of how passionate, articulate people talking about reading can be good entertainment. Here we're back around that table, waiting for the crayons to come out.
"Goody," says de Goldi, when it's her turn to give the morning talk, "well, I'm going to go, sort of, like, completely different. I've been looking at a book about shoes."
At which point I went to bed and, for something completely different, looked at a good book about words.
TV: Table talk a touch teachy
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