The Heyday Of The Cultural TV Documentary

Portakabin Weaseldefuser has become England’s most influential televised pointer at things of interest since the heyday of the TV cultural documentary back in the late 60s/early 70s. In recent series he has been filmed going around the country pointing at some of the UK’s most important aspects of cultural heritage for the benefit of TV viewers, mainly in order to save them the trouble of getting off their arses going to look at things themselves.

Pointing at things in TV documentaries is, of course, a very specialised field, and few have managed it with the finesse and dexterity of Weaseldefuser, who is capable of pointing at important things with either hand, depending on which part of the screen the important thing is when he needs to point at it. Not only that documentary directors have praised the way Weaseldefuser can look completely natural during those seemingly obligatory shots of him travelling from pointing at one important thing to a different place where he will point at something else, despite the fact that the two pointing episodes will have been filmed days, weeks, or even months apart and the actual journey filmed supposedly linking them was filmed completely separately on a entirely different day. Just why we need these bits, and other oddities like Weaseldefuser and an interviewee pretending to meet each other when Weaseldefuser apparently turns up out of the blue to knock on their door, when the interview was planned months in advance is anyone’s guess, but a highly prized – and seeming obligatory - part of the documentary maker’s art, along with so much of the obviously pre-planned spontaneity that litters these programmes like the droppings in a poorly-maintained rodent cage.

However, for as long as TV companies feel it is worthwhile interspersing these documentaries between their trailers for their more vapid offerings intended to keep the nation’s couch-potatoes in the mollified stupor that so many now regard as their birthright, then it seems presenters like Weaseldefuser will be encouraged to go out to point at things in the hope that – just maybe – there is someone out there in TV audience land who finds it even slightly interesting enough not to change the channel for a moment or two longer.