Stephen Baxter, a gleaming medieval historian, bites his nails.
You can tell by looking at his magnified digits; they consume the screen while he traces along the vellum pages of the Domesday Book, pointing out things like names, numbers and places. His nails are neat, but to the quick. Why does Baxter bite his nails? Is he this worried about telling us, the gentle viewer, about why this Domesday Book was written?
Baxter led the programme along the lines of native English vs foreign Norman invaders. This was hard to conceptualise, as being Norman later became being English, and being English before the Normans meant speaking a language which wasn’t English and not actually calling yourself English. You would have been an Angle. Or a Saxon. Or even just a resident of the shire you had never left because you travel on foot, you don’t go on holiday and you reserve the pony for luxuries, like pulling a plough.
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The oppressive dominance of the lone female singer is such that any woman who chooses to have her vocals submerged by – or at least equalised with – instruments suddenly sounds quaint, positively retro.
But listen to Best Coast’s album, Crazy For You (ignore the shit power ballad title). Bethany Consantino‘s not ripping her own heart from her bleeding bosom! She isn’t shrieking her way to a rousing crescendo, a tidal wave of sonic tears, with herself at the front like those surfing horses in the old Guinness advert! She isn’t plucking or poking away at some obscure instrument or piece of technology which all adds to the kooky aura of femininity, emotion and song!
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A collage of facial expressions interspersed with images of meat, usually being fried in a pan, is enlivened yearly by the addition of celebrities to Masterchef, the television show where cookery becomes competitive cuisine.
I remember when it was a staid affair, with Lloyd Grossman offering gentle feedback against a neutral backdrop of dark grey and blue tones. The contestants murmured in response to whatever he said, smiled politely, and shuffled off when it was their time to do so. They certainly didn’t look tearfully into the eyes of an invisible interviewer and seem to hold back sobs of anger as they confessed to making mistakes in previous episodes (Christine Hamilton).
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Stephen Baxter, a gleaming medieval historian, bites his nails. 
