Hello, Mrs Catherton.
Can I come round and show you the pamphlets... Yeah. ..For the fete?
Yeah, yeah. Just let yourself in, OK? I've just got to do a piece to camera. Oh. See you later.
Huh! Our world today is safer than it's ever been. Certainly safer than it was in medieval times.
There's no packs of wolves roaming the countryside gobbling villagers whole,
then dabbing their lips dry on the nearest bit of tapestry. No bubonic plague
blackening your fingertips, then turning your armpits into putrefied pockets of human wax.
No witchfinders killing your wife. These days, we've got it easy,
and there's ever so little to be frightened of.
But the moment they appear on TV,
even the quaintest surroundings can suddenly seem
dramatically more dangerous.
'The peaceful county of Devon
'is home to one of England's largest fireworks factories,
'but the tranquillity is shattered...
'..when a tiny spark sets off £18,000 of explosives.'.
Television's slightly hysterical take on the world
has a way of colouring your everyday experience, as we'll see throughout this series.
It often functions as a magic mirror, providing an endless stream of mesmerising unpleasantness.
Argh...! HE LAUGHS.
It shows you arresting tales of gory bloody murder.
Imagine the height, to get spray marks that long.
Horrifying visions of mankind's inevitable demise.
Eerily disturbing imagery, designed to sell you protection.
So who knows what your family could be eating!
And more petrifying news coverage than you can
shake a fear stick at.
Is Britain sliding toward chaos?
No wonder all these people are so terrified...on the inside.
They're not even safe in their own homes, as they sit there staring at a machine
that warns them worse is to come.
This week, How TV Ruined Your Life by shouting "boo!" in your mind.
Don't say it didn't. It did.
'It can happen anywhere, to anyone. An ordinary street.
'A moment's thoughtlessness.'.
TYRES SCREECH Whoa!
Ha-ha! That's a characteristically cheerful Public Information Film, or PIF,
one of many thousands of government-approved mini horror movies
designed to fear you into not going all dead.
Mike, look out!
SHE SCREAMS
Early Public Information Films
consisted of patronising cartoons...
A bicycle isn't at all under control when ridden freehand.
..hysterical bollockings... Polish a floor, put a rug on it,
you might as well set a mantrap!
..or cautionary tales
which simply barked at you like a Joe Bugner.
HORN BEEPS Hey! What are you doing? Come here.
Go on, Joe, knock some sense into 'em!
If you go on like that, you could be in big trouble!
It's a bit rich taking health and safety advice from a man who hits people in the face for a living.
Effectively, this was THE MAN using television to command
you, the citizen, to behave for your own good.
That's better.
Be smart...be safe.
'This man was safe...
'until now.'.
In the late-20th century, one of the greatest challenges facing the UK
was the population's apparent ignorance of how a new technology
known as electricity worked.
'And anyone who touches him also gets a shock.'.
Compounding the issue, this widespread lack of knowledge
coincided with a nationwide craze for leisure activities involving
long conductive objects.
Watch out!
Oh... Those wires are live!
'If you want to have fun and stay alive,
'keep away from overhead power lines.'.
And if you want to have fun but you're not fussed about staying alive, buy a kite.
Watch out!
SHE SCREAMS
Simply wouldn't have happened if he'd used a wooden kite.
Idiot!
In the light of such carnage, playing with an object not directly attached to your hands
might have seemed like a sensible option, unless - like famous electrocution victim Jimmy...
you lobbed it up a substation and got pussy-whipped into retrieving it.
Go on, get it!
Pass me that bit of wood.
Careful, you don't want to get splinters breaking into that high-voltage substation.
Jimmy!
Oh, yeah. Now... Now, you're crying. A minute ago, it was all,
"Oh, go and get it, Jimmy. Oh, do it for me, Jimmy!"
I mean, I'd call her a typical woman, but she isn't. She's just a horrid little girl!
Anyway, against the odds,
Jimmy survived that incident and is still alive today.
People still bring up the whole frisbee thing
and, I mean, yeah, it stung a bit, obviously,
but it wasn't as grievous as they made out in the film.
In some ways having 66,000 volts zip through you can be quite pleasant.
I actually work in toy design now.
We're trying to create a less aerodynamic frisbee,
to protect future generation.
Me and Sal are still together. We really bonded after the accident.
Much as my trainers bonded to my feet,
due to the intense heat generated.
Jiiiiimmmmmmmmmy!
As we've seen, many early PIFs had a nakedly bossy hue,
but today the establishment holds less sway
and the man in the street no longer responds
to the voice of authority ordering them about.
What would you say if David Cameron
told you not to throw a frisbee up a pylon?
I'd do it anyway.
Hence PIFs have changed tack
and the authoritarian instruction has largely been removed,
leaving behind nothing but cold horror in its wake.
Today's PIFs are little more than a ruthless cavalcade
of raw physical comment,
gory slapstick and jaw-droppingly morbid appeals to personal guilt.
Ah, typical kids today, just lying around.
Peek-a-boo!
Cheer up, mate, at least you got a free draft excluder out of it.
But in our putrid modern hell,
it's not just cars and pylons that will hurt you.
No, you're a danger to yourself.
If you're not puffing your way to a personal clogged-piped Armageddon,
you're boozing yourself dumb and tumbling from a scaffold,
or Pete Doherty-ing yourself before heading out on the tiles.
Rather than using calm reason,
most corrective television uses fear to hammer its message home.
It's one of the most powerful ways to grab an audiences attention.
But why?
Well, for one thing, no matter how sophisticated we humans appear
to be, with our fancy shoes and Nintendo Wiis and whatnot,
our brains are still cursed with a paleomammalian limbic system
which the modern iPad owning part of us can't control.
Our fear responses are governed by twin almond shaped clusters
of nuclei known as the amygdalae,
sort of primitive reactionary mind nuts
beyond the reach of human intellect, a but like talkSPORT presenters.
The point of the amygdalae is essentially protection.
You're supposed to be stimulated
when confronted by a loud noise or a sudden movement,
because it could be a lion leaping in to attack you.
That's why it's almost impossible to ignore anything
which seems like a threat, be it a lion or a scary newsreader.
A strong possibility of attack.
The spectre of Irish terrorism returns to British soil.
The amygdalae are also thought to be closely associated with memory,
so if you have an unpleasant experience
and your amygdalae are stimulated,
an association quickly forms in your head.
That's why the man uses scare tactics
to mold your behaviour from an early age.
But when you're a kid, it's not just the stuff
that's meant to be frightening that's frightening.
That's because children's entertainment has long been
a quite hideously disturbing carnival of grotesque imagery
and kids' TV is no different.
When I was a child I was scared of all manner
of ostensibly innocent things,
such as the manic cackling witch Fenella
who leant an air of demented menace
to the otherwise charming Chorlton And The Wheelies.
Then there was Pipkins, a downbeat lo-fi take on Sesame Street
in which a gang of grimy puppets,
who seemed to be living in some kind if squat,
wrestled with existential dilemmas.
Why do people have to die? Why can't they just live forever?
Cos that's the way it is, Topov. Everything and everybody has to die.
That's just the way it is.
Look, I'm going to put the kettle on and make a cup of tea.
I'm sure you'll feel better after that.
God, if the concept of death has blown Topov's mind,
imagine how he'll react when he realises he can't taste
that cup of tea cos his tongue's made of felt.
My enjoyment of the ostensiblyharmless Jigsaw
was also tempered by regular sightings of Mr Noseybonk,
a walking phallic symbol appeared to have stepped straight out
of a pre-pubescent nightmare. A lot of kids' TV was so creepy,
it sometimes seemed the people behind it were deliberately
trying to scare the viewer with eerie imagery,
and the scarier a kids' show was,
the more likely it'll have lodged in our collective memory.
I'm talking, of course, about Orlov.
Do you remember Orlov?
No.
He was a kind of egg-shaped thing.
And, just for the purposes of this,
could you say that you do remember him? Yeah, OK.
Do you remember Orlov? Yeah, I remember him.
What did he look like? Shape of an egg.
'Now on BBC1, egg-shaped animation which everyone in the nation is certain to remember in 30 years.
'Orlov.'
'Ah! Orlov.
'Orlov's enjoying an afternoon snooze.
'Someone's not happy.
'That's HIS nest.
'What's going on in that little bird's mind?
'I suppose all animals are ultimately unknowable. Even our parents.
'Little birdie's going up top, and he's got an audience.
'We're all passive observers of what follows.
'I wouldn't do that.'.
TICKING
'Now everything is over.
'The actors leave the stage.'.
During my formative years, mushroom clouds were all the rage.
Britain's doctors say 33 million people in this country may be killed and injured in a nuclear war.
To my babyish eyes, it seemed every news bulletin consisted of nuclear paranoia, Mrs Thatcher
and blood-curdling statistics about the inevitable apocalypse.
The only people trying to stop this madness seemed to be kindly dinner ladies and Lofty off EastEnders.
If we have got peace camps, non-violent direct action
outside every nuclear base in this country, they can't shift us.
Yeah, except maybe with water cannons or Tasers
or bulldozers, or I suppose they could always just pick you up and...
What I'm saying is, they can shift you.
Despite the high stakes however, it was hard for the average viewer to picture a nuclear war.
We'd seen what happened in Hiroshima, but that was black and white and crackly
and seemed to mainly affect Japanese people in the 1940s.
What the average Brit needed was a no-nonsense visual guide to what could happen. And they got it.
In 1982, the BBC broadcast a QED special called a Guide To Armageddon
which simulated the consequences of a one-megaton nuclear bomb going pop over St Paul's Cathedral.
Apparently, the heat alone would be inconsiderate enough to spoil a few windows, leave a Bible dog-eared,
devalue the contents of the National Gallery and boil the Serpentine.
It would be bad news for anyone who enjoys not burning to death in an incinerated car or bus.
Even four miles away, it was still going to go down as one of your least favourite afternoons.
In fact, if you were even vaguely nearby, your body would frazzle like a carbonised lamb chop.
Looks pretty nasty. But the ladies love a war wound, yeah?
You'd be beating them off with a stick! Albeit a burnt, radioactive stick.
In case you're worrying the situation seems hopeless,
the show went on to highlight some of the defensive measures the average 1980s' couple could take.
The duo whitewashed their windows and constructed a bijou shelter under the stairs...
perfect for enjoying a cup of tea.
And they fared pretty well.
The whitewash keeps 80% of the heat out.
There may be fires in unprotected houses nearby,
but Joy and Eric should survive. Mm.
At least for 17 seconds. Hm.
After that, the blast demolishes their terrace of houses.
The QED atomic spectacular proved so entertaining, it convinced the BBC
to make Threads, possibly the most frightening drama ever broadcast on British television.
Thread graphically depicted
how a nuclear bomb could cause millions of pounds of improvements to Sheffield's architecture.
The moment of detonation itself was brilliantly realised
with stark, horrifying images that set amygdala across the nation
lighting up like the residents of Sheffield.
And just when you think things can't get any worse, they do.
Threads keeps going, trudging into the grim aftermath as Sheffield is transformed
into an almost Plymouth-style wasteland in which people eat rats like they're cream buns
and the cast of Last Of The Summer Wine is hopelessly depressed.
And even Ron Weasley isn't safe.
GUNSHOT
I guess if Threads had an overall theme
it was, "oh, shit!"
The next morning, BBC reporters descended on Sheffield
to gauge how locals reacted to seeing homes and work places destroyed.
I quite enjoyed it, actually.
Enjoyed seems a strange word to use for a harrowing play.
It may be, but I didn't find it frightening at all.
At the same time, the Americans had a pop at nuclear drama themselves
with vaguely the more upbeat The Day After
starring Steve Guttenberg
in a tale of everyday burning, screaming Americans.
Like Threads, it depicted billowing clouds
which looked like the world's grooviest lava lamp.
And an hilarious sequence in which a kiddiewink
gets a bit too much nuclear war in his eye.
Danny! >
CHARLIE LAUGHS
Anyway, Steve Guttenberg survives by hiding in a shop.
Although the radiation leaves him looking a little less cock sure by the end.
After US president Ronald Reagan saw this, he wrote in his diary
that it was very effective and had left him greatly depressed.
The superpowers soon adopted a policy of arms reduction,
with the signing of the nuclear arms force treaty in Recjavick.
In summary, Steve Guttenberg saved the world.
Thanks, Steve! Don't make any more films.
Thanks to Guttenberg's sacrifice, today's world isn't facing nuclear war between two superpowers.
Yet it feels more chaotic and perilous than it did in the '80s.
Perhaps because the presentation of current affairs is more chaotic and perilous.
It's almost a hyper-edited, real-time thriller.
Tonight, can the world come together to confront a rogue nation?
Tuning into the news is like looking directly into the face of terror.
A chilling new look at the face of terror.
Video of a suicide bomber smiling for the camera,
as he gets ready for his deadly mission in Afghanistan.
This is like the Jihadist 24, it's got that tension in it
that you can't really turn yourself away.
You can't turn away because you are biologically programmed
to pay attention to any potential threat.
The amygdalae may fire off in response to the preprogrammed terrors we're born with,
instinctive fear of loud noises and sudden movements.
But it's also easy for them to help us learn to fear almost anything.
Television can condition you to be frightened of all sorts of things.
For example, dark, city streets.
Most of the dark, city streets you see are on TV.
And, what's happening in them? Usually something awful
like a mugging or a murder, or at best, an horrific sexual encounter
involving a tramp and a bullmastiff,
if you're watching German... television.
In the 1970's, professors George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania
carried out pioneering research into the effect of television on viewers.
They believed within a few decades, television
had come to enjoy a degree of influence on society
that was comparable to the power religion held over mankind for centuries.
Gerbner and Gross developed an hypothesis known as Cultivation Theory.
It says that over time,
watching television alters a viewers perception of reality.
That their view of the real world
starts to march in step of that of the televised one.
The more frequently an image or event is depicted on screen,
the greater significance the cultivated viewer attaches to it in the real world.
Since much of TV consists of dramatic conflict,
violent action and alarming news coverage,
the more you watch, the more passive, nervous and frightened you become.
Gerbner called this "mean world syndrome".
Literally the belief that your world has become a mean and frightening place.
His research appeared to show that heavy viewers often over estimate
the of risk they faced in everyday life.
They were more likely to believe crime rates were rising even when they were falling,
and often thought they were more likely to become victims of crime.
AUDIO FROM TELEVISION
'Shut up!' Ugh!
Switching it off doesn't make you feel any safer.
Now you're more aware than ever of the silence all around... DOOR CREAKS.
Who's there?
Hello?
Hello. Is there someone there? I'll call the police.
THUD Oh, piss.
Crimewatch began in 1984
and was originally fronted by Nick Ross and Sue Cook.
They were assisted by an aquarium of coppers and a duo of police presenters.
This knife is believed to have been used in the attack.
The real stars were the gallery of furious and anonymous men
perpetually glaring at you. Like the participants
in the Strangeways edition of Guess Who.
Slightly more realistic suspects and actors peopled the rest of the show
popping up in CCTV footage and posing for reconstruction snaps
like they were modelling the latest in fashionable crime wear.
The most frightening crime of all is murder.
Oh God!
And there's no danger of a TV murder shortage.
Not that regular murderers are dangerous enough for TV
where they are routinely depicted as criminal geniuses
playing cat and mouse with a troubled detective,
wearing a worried expression of a bloodhound opening a court summons.
Yes, according to television, most killers are artisan killers
whose every offering deserves to be analysed for literary merit
and they're markedly more vicious than almost any
of their real-life equivalents.
Take the maniac running riot in the inaugural episode of the dark, moody Wire In The Blood,
which featured a mad man who specialised in creating diabolical implements of torture,
in the most upsetting Blue Peter makes ever captured on tape.
Oh, I've got one of those, actually. It's the Ikea Schpiken seat.
Like the best TV monsters, this killer also sent tapes of his victims to taunt the police.
We've just received this from the post room, addressed to Bradfield CID.
MUSIC: Blue Peter Theme.
Hi...
I'm Police Constable Damien O'Connell...
Hi, Damien, how's it going?
Oh... Not so good, then?
Typical police, sitting on their arse.
Argh!
Of course, most real-life murderers aren't unstoppable artistic killing machines,
but pathetic individuals who have done something awful in an ill thought-out panic.
Most of them don't know what to do after committing their crime.
It's not like there's an advice hotline they can turn to...
Welcome back. If you've just joined us, the former Beast of Brighton,
rehabilitated murderer Ashley Stud is answering your queries.
So, if you've just killed somebody, do call in.
For now, on line three, we've got Sue from Gosforth.
Sue, what's happened?
Blood is everywhere... I mean, everywhere!
I can't feel my hands. I don't even know if these are my hands...
Sue, Sue...
Take a step back mentally,
catch your breath, quieten your mind as much as you can.
So, you've literally just murdered someone, have you? Yes...
And everything seems a bit unreal? Yes.
Well, that's normal. That's absolutely what I'd expect to find.
His eyes opened. His eyes opened!
Never mind his eye. That'd stay open, even if you sawed his head off.
Have you got a top on? A blouse or...?
I'm in a t-shirt.
OK, what I want you to do is take it off and drape it over his face.
That'll stop you looking in his eyes.
And we've got to get rid of the clothing your wearing
because of DNA.
Can you do that for me?
I'm doing it now.
I can't feel my hands!
What was that, Sue? She keeps saying she can't feel her hand.
Yes, that's the adrenalin. It's a fascinating mindset.
I used to think I could climb into the air in the room,
or that my brain was made of stallions.
I've covered it. Right. Now...
You need to chuck the rest of your clothes on him,
set fire to your house and leave town.
TV loves presenting you with fearful tales of murder
but it's often a curiously reassuring type of fear
which reinforces the notion that real life follows a dramatic narrative
in which the dastardly villains are brought to justice.
When undeniably random bad things do make it on screen,
TV processes them on your behalf,
turning them into titillation in shows like the enthusiastic 999
which enabled viewers to enjoy mindless emergencies
in the comfort of their own homes.
Tonight, the little boy who was swept over a waterfall... Haha!
..and the teenagers who came to the rescue. Booo!
999 justified its existence
by alerting the public to important issues like lifebelt theft.
4,000 lifebelts like this one are stolen or go missing every year...
Yeah, people just toss them in the sea. It's an outrage.
It also afforded Michael Burke an opportunity to ask the important questions.
Have you ever thought what it would be like to be stuck in the path of a giant digger?
No. Why don't you paint a picture for me?
999's jaunty low-budget reconstructions look altogether gentile
compared to the effects-laden reconstruction extravaganzas of today.
Shows like Air Crash Investigation,
which ostensibly exists to give you greater insight into airline safety
but are actually about giving your fear cells a cheeky tickle.
Air Crash Investigation combines impressive special effects with an almost pornographic focus
on the human terror of the passengers and crew.
There's also dialogue, torn from the black box recorder
and shoved in the mouths of actors.
Push it up. Push it way up! Way up!
Way up! Way up!
You know, there's surprisingly racy dialogue on these black box recorders.
In fact, you could probably run an entire adult channel where girls read it out for the benefit
of people who can't decide whether they prefer air crashes or masturbating.
Push it up. Push it way up.
Way up. Way up.
Anyway, much like the best pornography,
Air Crash Investigation features lots of tense stick-gripping action,
sweaty shots of a Ron Jeremy type, juddering away,
and, of course, the inevitable money shot.
Even though you're 20 times likely to die during the drive to the airport than you are on the plane,
chances are, this is the kind of dramatic image your brain has associated with air travel.
Apparently concerned it might be running out of nasty real-life threats to warn you about,
TV has started visually speculating about bad stuff that hasn't happened but might.
One day, the world will end...
In recent years, there has been a slew of scary hand-wringing
what-if drama documentaries depicting what could occur IF
things got even more dangerous for humankind than they already are.
We've seen spectacular simulations of what might happen IF.
Yellowstone Park suddenly blew up.
Hard-hitting investigations into what might happen IF
the sun suddenly ballooned in size.
'This is a world we can barely imagine.'.
And spine-tingling visualisations of how things might look if a large hadron collider went a bit Amstrad.
In fact, it sometimes seems there's no end to TV's perpetual quest to
helpfully alert the viewer to new potential threats.
In television's hypothetical universe, danger could spring from literally anywhere.
Morning.
'Britain's homes and offices contain an estimated three billion pens.
'The rise of computers may have dented their popularity, yet millions of us rely on pens
'every day. But what would happen if these apparently harmless writing implements turned on their users
'by heating up inexplicably?'.
Written communication is one of mankind's greatest achievements.
It evolved over centuries, yet today we take it for granted.
If our ability to produce hand-written notes
were to be affected by an unexpected increase in pen temperature,
it could have grave consequences for every man, woman and child on the planet.
'By 10.0oam manual writing implements nationwide are being hastily abandoned.
'There are widespread injuries,
'with casual office doodlers amongst the first casualties.
'In the markets of Soho, stallholders can no longer price up their vegetables.
'Fortunately, in today's modern workplace,
'forgoing pens isn't the hindrance it once was.'.
WOMAN SCREAMS
'But by lunchtime, the heat is spreading to computer keyboards.'.
If typing became impossible, or at best, extremely painful,
it would transform the online world in an instant.
Internet speech would become even more incomprehensible and angry than ever.
'Anxious citizens turn to news networks for information.
'But with no type-written text on the autocue,
'news anchors are powerless to help.
'The Government calls an emergency meeting
to grab hold of the situation.
Quiet!
QUIET!
Look, we won't get through this by meaninglessly jabbering over each other like dogs on a speedboat.
We need to keep a cool head.
OK. We need to collate what we know.
And...
HE SLURS
'Disaster strikes at mid-afternoon,
'as people's voices start to get hot.
'Soon, there will be no way for humans to communicate at all,
'plunging out planet into a new Dark Age, and eventually,
'causing it to explode altogether.'.
Alarming, though as much of television is,
as we stare into our screens, desperately gazing into the light
like a rodent suckling at a consolatory teat,
the warning box is comforting us even as it scares.
It says, if you obey the man, you can avoid danger.
It transforms random calamity into Hollywood-style entertainment
rendering it less real.
It says the good guys will defeat the evil guys,
and it says Steve Guttenberg can save the world.
It makes sense of our universe in a way that's as soothing as it is fake. Morning!
And what's more, it gets away with it.
And that is frightening.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.
E-mail subtitling@bbc. Co. uk