Guardian Blogs: TV & RadioLast night's TV: Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for ChangeSo the McCanns are sad and angry - did we really need a two-hour documentary to tell us?
Sam Wollaston
The Guardian, Thursday 1 May 2008
Kate and Gerry McCann outside their house in Rothley, Leicestershire. Photograph: PA
Tuesday's News at Ten (ITV1) led on the McCanns and how they felt last August when they were named aguidos in the investigation into the disappearance of their daughter. We already knew that the McCanns were aguidos, of course, so the news - the biggest story of the day according to Sir Trevor and the team, bigger than petrol prices, or the housing market, or Austria, or Ken v Boris - was that Kate McCann says she felt "angry" and Jerry found it "surreal" when they became people of interest to the inquiry. Bong: Kate McCann was angry last summer. Bong: petrol's £5 a gallon. Bong: the horrid Austrian man is definitely both father and grandfather to lots of kids.
Kate had revealed her anger in a new documentary to be shown the following evening. So Sir Trevor's top story was essentially a trailer for another show: the main news tonight on ITV1 is that there's another programme on ITV1 tomorrow. I think that's shocking. And they wonder why twice as many people watch the BBC News at 10 (which inexplicably missed the McCann scoop and went with the mortgage squeeze).
Anyway, what about the documentary itself, last night's Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change (ITV1)? Well, there's a clue in its awkward title. It felt like two films, a compromise between what the film-makers and the McCanns wanted. This is speculation, but I imagine that Madeleine: One Year On is what the film-makers wanted to make, a documentary in which the McCanns spoke openly and candidly about their past year, hopefully with some sensational and newsworthy nuggets. Which they got, but as part of the deal they also got the film the McCanns wanted, about their campaign for a European equivalent of the Amber Alert in America.
It made for a bloody great sprawl of a film. Two hours! That's too long for most feature films, and much too long for an interview with two quite ordinary people. Yes, they have been through the most terrible thing anyone can go through. No, that doesn't make them worth two hours, especially as anyone who's opened a newspaper in the past year pretty much knows every detail of the story already. And, in spite of what the people at ITN think, there were no new revelations. I can't imagine many people did the distance.
I think the film probably did succeed in showing us the real McCanns, possibly for the first time, and of course I hope it helps them find Madeleine. At times it was moving, but, as television, it would have benefited from being cut in half. Plus, it jumped around in time confusingly, and the music was oppressive - the same four cello notes, again and again. A cello always signifies sorrow. It was annoying at first; after two hours, it was maddening.
It's difficult to keep the visuals stimulating, too. We saw the McCanns at home in Leicestershire; Kate and Jerry talking on the sofa. But you can't have two hours of sofa, so we joined them in a lot of taxis - in Portugal, London, Washington. And there were plenty of lingering tree shots - leafless, winter trees (this is a sad story, after all). And a flying heron ... eh, what's that about? Maybe the heron is an aguido, too. Does Sir Trevor know?
