MoL says the BBC is a terrible institution which has been making awful programmes for years and pretending we all like them. It is run by senior executives and middle-management who speak the language of bureaucrats, achieve consensus by committee and replace product with organisation. There are no programmes now, only exercises in visual organisation. Their language permeates even the weather forecast. On the radio this morning the forecaster announced “On-going concern for growing flood issues” when once she would have said a risk or danger of flood.

MoL also notes a visual incoherence in television drama: too much shot selection, too many camera angles, a general inability to decide (as in direction), therefore lack of purpose to a given scene, only blanket coverage. Every scene shot to death, and no one can decide in the editing what to leave out. An example of this was the Christmas edition of Midsomer Murders. A body is discovered in a weir. The tic-tac coverage suggested the whole Spanish football team was directing, including a redundant high-angle, because someone had ordered the equipment. MoL proposes new measures of austerity: one camera, one tripod, no dolly, no zoom, no long lens, no shot to last under thirty seconds, no special effects, no explosions, a kind of intense concentration and viewing figures next to zero.

Television’s biggest problem is being so desperate to be liked while considering its audience stupid.