Television - Andrew Billen settles into the West Wing of the White House
As the American news anchors return from their chilly OB cabins in New Hampshire with more of a story than they dared hoped for - the emergence of John McCain as a real threat to Junior Bush - President Josiah Bartlet is already in his troubled mid-term. Bartlet is the incumbent in the White House's fictional West Wing, a compulsive new import being shown by Sky One (9pm, Mondays).
Bartlet, who is portrayed by Martin Sheen, no less, and whose name signifies his moral descent from one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence, himself hails from New Hampshire. There is a bit of Mr Deeds to him, and a bit of John McCain, although he is a Democrat and his grasp on defence issues is slippery at best. He is long on folksy anecdote and moral outrage, short of temper and physical equilibrium. In the first episode, his aides' pagers spell out "Potus is in a bicycle accident", "Potus" being the acronym for President of the United States and "bicycle accident" being code for bicycle accident. Even Leo, Bartlet's loyal chief of staff (played by John Spencer, the clapped-out lawyer from LA Law), calls the president a "klutz". But he's a klutz with a heart - which cannot be said of all those who surround him, the lieutenants who actually run the machine, which is to say the communications officers.
In The West Wing, life is in perpetual spin. Temperamentally, the programme shares the frenzy of ER, except that its crises are legislative not medical. Two weeks ago, for instance, the crash team provided emergency surgery to a gun-control bill that had gone five votes adrift in Congress. But although the programme enjoys the turbulent ambience of ER - the steadicam is in constant motion as the cast stride through a labyrinthine set towards the plush but lonely oval of the Executive Office itself - the dialogue has the comic panache of Ally McBeal. In the opener, the deputy communications director, Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), has to address a party of schoolchildren, a task for which this egotist is ill-suited but which he cannot refuse because the class includes the chief of staff's own daughter. Soon Sam is improvising wildly, attributing the Roosevelt Room to Franklin rather than Teddy and claiming that the furniture is made from salvaged pirate ships. The teacher asks him to step outside.
Sam: "Ms O'Brian. I understand your feelings, but please believe me when I say I'm a nice guy having a bad day. I have just found out the Times is publishing a poll that says a considerable portion of Americans feel the White House has lost energy and focus, a perception that is not likely to be altered by the video footage of the President riding his bicycle into a tree. As we speak, the Coast Guard is fishing Cubans out of the Atlantic, while the Governor of Florida wants to blockade the Port of Miami. A good friend of mine's about to be fired for going on television and making sense, and it turns out I accidentally slept with a prostitute last night. Now, would you please, in the name of compassion, tell me which one of these kids is my boss's daughter."
Ms O'Brian: "That would be me."
Now, that's script-writing. Yet although sharply cynical in its detail, the show's premise is a blurry reflection of all we know about presidencies in practice. Unlike the real White House under whichever incumbent, this administration is as impeccably liberal as the show itself, a reinforcement of one of the paradoxes of Hollywood, namely that an industry which lives and dies by market research should be permanently skewed leftward of its audience. Here the good guys are unashamedly pro-gun control, pro-choice, and anti the religious right. The West Wing exhales a whimsical optimism about democracy itself that is unintentionally comic to British sensibilities. Monday's instalment ended with Bartlet addressing his team on science's victory over smallpox: "Surely we can do it again," he intoned, "as we did it in a time when our eyes looked towards the heavens and with outstretched fingers we touched the face of God."
How this sentimentality has survived two terms of Clinton is a subject fit for an essay by the lefty expatriate and jolly good hater, Christopher Hitchens. In an excellent documentary by Palash Dave on Channel 4's middle-of-the-night indie-documentary slot, The Other Side, which I had hoped to review, Hitchens travels around America promoting his latest book and insisting that Clinton's carnality is linked by more than the word's Latin roots to the carnage he periodically inflicts on foreign states. Bill, he holds, is a psychopathic liar, a war criminal and (according to one Juanita Broaddrick) a serial rapist.
Hitch Hike, however, has been postponed for legal reasons by Channel 4, so I can suggest only that you look out for it and remember to set your VCRs. I just hope that the delay does not prove, even more than the 2am scheduling, that C4 is no exception to Hitchens's theory about TV companies valuing political consensus even above ratings. The hypothesis at least goes a long way to explaining the reassuring universe of The West Wing, a lullaby inexplicably billed by Sky as a satire.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the London "Evening Standard"
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
