A series about the history of English music is a bit too anxious to please

It is intensely annoying when journalists tell their readers about all the famous people they know. But I just can’t resist. I was at college with Charles Hazlewood, the BBC’s current music hunk, and all I can say is: even back then, we knew he would be famous.

While the rest of us were listening to the Wedding Present, and pretending to like them, Charles – I won’t call him Charlie, because I haven’t seen him for 20 years – was trotting around worrying about Brahms. He was dashing and charming and in possession of a modishly fine pair of sideboards which, I notice, he still has, though his fringe is a little less luxuriant these days. Oh, how the clock ticks.

Ever the masochist, I just looked at his website, only to discover that, in addition to his BBC radio shows and television documentaries, Charles has his own symphony orchestra, Excellent Device; his own period orchestra, Army of Generals; and his own “sonic adventurers”, the All Stars (whatever sonic adventurers may be).

Crikey. I have only just got my first iPod.

Hazlewood is the presenter of a new series, The Birth of British Music (BBC2, Saturdays, 8pm), a “personal exploration” of the composers Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Part one (9 May) was about Purcell “the Londoner” (Haydn will be “the celebrity” – well, you knew one of them would have to be, didn’t you?).

Was it any good? In parts, yes.

There is no doubting that its presenter, with his good looks and his loud, plosive voice, is a huge asset, and if the series persuades even one person to download Dido and Aeneas on to their personal thingy, we should be grateful.

All the same, it is wearying the way this kind of television is going, by which I mean: ever more chatty and inclusive.

Apparently, it is not enough that we be given some interesting facts about Henry Purcell – and he was very interesting, having seen out the plague, the Great Fire, the reigns of Charles II and James II, and the Glorious Revolution – followed by some exquisite playing of his preposterously beautiful music; no, we must bond with him.

How so? Well, he is British, and we are British. Thus, he can help us to explore “who we really are”. Yes, it’s a bit like Who Do You Think You Are?, only without the ancestors, the genealogy, and the part where the presenter cries.

Hazlewood doesn’t cry; he enthuses, with every bone in his ripped little body.

“The spirituality in Purcell’s music can be simply massive!” he said.

Is massive really the right word? Still, I am going to forgive him these excesses, and here’s why. First, Hazlewood is genuinely talented. I don’t mean at presenting; I mean he is a real musician. Better him than Lauren Laverne. Second, because his director made him – who knows why? – talk to camera on a crowded Tube, which must have been borderline humiliating; he deserves a “get out of jail free” card for that stunt alone. And third, for the bit where he took us to the British Library to see Purcell’s scorebook, which made me shiver, especially when we saw the blank pages that followed what the curator of music manuscripts imagined had been the news of Charles II’s death.

In other news, Flight of the Conchords has returned to BBC4.

I don’t get Flight of the Conchords, which is about a couple of failed Kiwi musicians and their attempt to get famous in New York, starring a couple of Kiwi musicians (Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement) who, thanks to this series, have since become famous in New York.

The point of it, I guess, is supposed to be the songs (you get about three of their fey little ditties in each half-hour episode); I gather that these musical interludes are considered rather “mould-breaking” in HBO circles.

Only I hate it when the songs come on, just as I used to hate it when Mike Yarwood used to close his show with a tune, or when the Two Ronnies did their musical number.

I long for the songs to be over.

But then, once they are, all you’re left with is these two whimsical dorks pretending to be really, really thick.

Why on earth do people like it?

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