TVNZ 7

There is no doubt that New Zealand is a pretty good place to live. There is the natural environment, most of it in the South Island, but with a few fine spots in the North. There is the country's remoteness from the remainder of the world, keeping some of that world's less desirable aspects at a good arm's length while allowing many of the more attractive bits of consumer nonsense to find their way into our lives.  There are the people, mercifully only a little over 4,000,000 of them.  Many of them are interesting and good fun with the comforting she'll-be-right, we-can-fix-anything, frontier attitude not entirely forgotten.  The big village feel of the country means that those who upset us, especially the politicians, don't have anywhere much to hide.

But sometimes we get it wrong. The shutting down of TVNZ 7 is the latest example.  If we are to regard ourselves as part of the modern, sophisticated 'Western' world, then public service broadcasting is an essential part of this.  It is not something put there in times of plenty for the titillation of the chattering classes.  In fact, I am fairly sure that it is not the chattering classes that watch it, as some have said.  Yes, this channel might not be watched by as many people who watch TV2 or TV3, or Sky Sport, or even those children's channels that allow parents extra time in bed at the weekends.

BUT THIS DOES NOT MATTER.  The important thing is that TVNZ 7 or its equivalent exist in New Zealand. It should be there, with a degree of serious-minded intellectual content (that can still be entertaining and amusing) if anybody should want to click onto it. If we want to we can find out what is going on in the arts and sciences, in public and current affairs or in society at large, in more depth than the commercial interests of the remainder of television allows.  And, it should be said, it is a huge remainder, even if one considers only the free-to-view channels. Commercial interests dominate our world, this cannot be helped.  But they do not have to dominate everything.

The idea of cross-subsidy runs throughout society.  In the business world, products that sell well sometimes support those that barely break even.  This is because there is some demand for the non-profitable item. In the University world subjects that are of high demand and that are relatively inexpensive to run support those that of lesser demand and more expensive to run.  This is because a University is not regarded as a University if it does not include, say, Music or Philosophy or Classics.  So. surely the more commercially viable parts of the television enterprise (and that, after all, is most of them) could find a way to support TVNZ 7 or its equivalent.

It is important not to get this wrong.  The strength of being a small country can also be its weakness.  When we get something wrong, it is completely obvious.  It cannot be hidden behind complex social structures or smothered under a blanket of political or commercial rhetoric.  And we are about to get this wrong and to revert to being a slightly less sophisticated and less desirable society than we were before TVNZ 7.

Presence

Idris Elba has presence. It's hard to define, but one knows it when one sees it and one sees it in him.  He is a superb actor.  Just compare his performance in The Wire and in Luther.  In The Wire, he is the brains behind a Baltimore criminal gang.  He doesn't say much but he gives off a smiling menace that fills the screen.  He is the thinking person's American gangster through and through.  Even his walk seems to be exactly what one imagines it should be.  And there is a moment in an early episode when he is clearly entering a liaison with the wife of a jailed gang member.  All we see is his hand slowly undoing a zip.  That's it, nothing else, but it is very sexy.  That is presence.

Then, in Luther, which is Neil Cross writing at the top of his game, Elba is a London police detective.  Again, he doesn't say much but his miniscule facial expressions say it all.  And he walks with the shoulders first, rolling style of a London bloke.  Again, he fills the screen with his presence.  It is not because he is a super-hero.  Clearly, he is an anti-hero in The Wire and in Luther, he might be simultaneously sharp-witted and intuitive, but he also has difficulty with relationships, particularly with women, and he often finds himself in lonely places, troubled by what to do next.  Throughout all though, his presence is magnetic, drawing one into the small screen.

There are others with presence who appear on the big or the small screen.  It is not a quality that gradually emerges but one that is apparent almost immediately.  It is hard to pin down what it is about the person that make it so obvious.  It could be size.  One might think that being very large would create presence.  It certainly helps if the person is filling more than the average amount of space.  But size is hard to judge, particularly on the small screen and certainly not every basket-baller that one sees interviewed has presence - in fact quite a few have whatever is its opposite. And then there are actors like Al Pacino.  He has instant presence in spite of taking up very little space.  He can do it with his voice, but he also has it just by being on screen.

Idris Elba is big, of course, but this is not it.  It is something to do with stillness.  At times, he might walk fast or even run, but mostly he is quite still, seemingly slow to react and sometimes apparently not reacting at all.  This is Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns.  The most one saw was the rolling of an unlit cigar in the lips.  It meant many things, depending on the circumstances, but it usually involved mayhem for someone else.  Idris Elba has no cigar.  The sheer immobility of his face results in either a few words that penetrate whatever is going on or in some rapid physical action.

In the right person then, whether on screen or not, this stillness generates presence and the writers of The Wire and Luther are astute enough to have seen it in Idris Elba and he is astute enough to project it.  If you haven't yet seen any of either series, I envy you the experience to come.