Great Television

It's rare I get frustrated over missing something on the telly, but this morning I was reminded of the fact that sometimes I'm not able to watch material of real quality, essentially due to the pressures of work, and I'm the poorer for it.

I was getting some necessary marking done, before going off to rehearsals for our forthcoming show, and had put Sky News on in the background just to get a sense  of whether anything big was breaking in the bigger world. In fact, it wasn't exactly news that was on, but a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster, obviously drawing on the interest sparked by the recent dramatization for tv of the event. In fact, it incorporated footage from the show into its narrative of what took place, though it was dominated by shots of the desolation of Chernobyl and environs today and interviews with survivors. Rightly no cheesy voice-overs were used as the survivors told their disturbing, moving tales, with just subtitles to assist. But since I was marking I couldn't really follow anything. I kept pulling myself away from the scripts, usually on completing a paragraph, to try and get the gist of the programme, but this was highly unsatisfactory.

It was brilliant, compelling stuff. Totally gripping, except I couldn't afford to be gripped. And the same was true, I remembered, of the dramatization. I watched a chunk of the last episode knowing it was so good that one day I'd sit and watch the whole series. But when that day will be, I sadly know not.