Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Waterloo Road and the Crested Tits

It’s taken me a while to get round to writing this, mainly since it involves admitting that I watch Waterloo Road (naff TV programme set in Scottish school with over-exaggerated accents.) Look, it’s a guilty pleasure. However my fingers are poised over the BBC complaints page until I decide whether my grievances are unjustifiably petty or not.

Around 4 million people tune in to Waterloo Road each week and sadly would have witnessed the mocking of dear old Audrey McFall and her Crested Tits.. Miss McFall is the school’s history teacher and portrayed as a bit of an old nutter in weird clothes. She’s pretty wild too; this series saw her arrested for demonstrating against the destruction of local woodland and nesting sites. Campaigns for her cause were met with sniggers, jeers, rolling of eyes and other such fun pokings. Alright it does sound petty now that I’ve written it down.


Alas, the point I’m trying to make is this; should a highly popular and influential BBC programme be contributing to the unfair stereotyping of "outdoorsy folk"? There is real crisis right now concerning young people and their lack of connection to nature (as mentioned in a previous post.) And so for a programme to include such a storyline is surely just a little irresponsible??...

It would have been nice to see the show using their popular characters (particularly the school kids) to promote environmental awareness to it's younger audience. 


Anyway, the BBC are responsible for some truly spectacular nature and science documentaries. I just don’t know why they would want to undo all their hard work! Rant over. 

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