How Black Lives Matter created Jason Arday
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In the interests of complete candour, I should reveal that Dawn French and I have had ‘beef’ (and how suitable that word is, as we were both beefy at the time) for decades. Since 1994, to be precise, when she made a television documentary on ‘Big Women’. She asked me to appear in it; I refused; she put my name repeatedly on the credits. What a way to celebrate porkers - by calling someone a porker! I was merely chubby at the time, being a good 5’9 in my prime (I’ve shrunk a bit with age and disability) whereas she was only 5 foot and maybe 19 stone at her ‘peak’.
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Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the first page I turn to every week.’ Whatever people’s politics, background or other interests, to be a Spectator reader was to love Rod. Rod did his best, of course, to be unloveable. At least in print. Nothing, and no one, apart from possibly Millwall, was spared from his criticism. Savage, foul-mouthed, merciless. But also hilarious, superbly well-informed and honest. Above all honest. There are all sorts of enlightened souls in and around journalism who pretend to that virtue.
Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the first page I turn to every week.’ Whatever people’s politics, background or other interests, to be a Spectator reader was to love Rod. Rod did his best, of course, to be unloveable. At least in print. Nothing, and no one, apart from possibly Millwall, was spared from his criticism. Savage, foul-mouthed, merciless. But also hilarious, superbly well-informed and honest. Above all honest. There are all sorts of enlightened souls in and around journalism who pretend to that virtue.
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You’re not going to like this and it pains me to say so but Gomorrah: The Origins is not in the same league as Gomorrah. The wardrobe is more stylish, the characters are more approachable, the dialogue is more expensive, the locations are more attractive, the plotting is more comprehensible, and the mise-en-scène is lusher, more cinematic and less spare. But in the context of the original, these qualities aren’t so much a virtue as a capitulation. Gomorrah (or Gomorra – La Serie, as it was in Italian, so one can never remember whether or not to include the ‘h’) ran on Sky Atlantic for five seasons from 2014 to 2021. This was a period where Anglo-American TV had long since begun its inexorable decline into glib, shallow and predictable diversity-cast wokedom.