BBC Spoof Drama - World on Fire

 

The BBC is currently excelling itself with the spoof wartime drama, “World on Fire.”  The plot is obvious:  bungling male white British colonialist racists v Nazis (no Germans).  Fortunately, there are several feisty females to keep the war on track.  It’s the sheer preposterousness that I find addictive.  For example, David, who I think is Jewish, is a fighter pilot.  David has been successful flying the all-weather day/night Spitcane with notable victories against Nazi bombers in cloud and at night.  Last night he was sent on a dangerous mission to fly through bad weather across the Channel and locate some troublesome Nazi guns by breaking cloud cover and plotting the resulting fire.  David, who maintains crystal clear radio communications with his controller, who he meticulously addresses as “Sir (this is very odd because elsewhere in the drama other ranks appear to address Officers as anything but Sir),” breaks cloud with pin-point accuracy and announces his position as over Northern France at coordinates 50 degrees North and 30 degrees West.  Some mistake surely?  Fifty North and 30 West is about halfway between Canada and Ireland in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or at least it was the last time I flew under Oceanic Air Traffic Control.  No matter, David finds his way safely home only to be sent on an even more dangerous mission.  This time he is not so lucky but he deserves his fate.  We see David in the spacious Spitcane cockpit wresting the cockpit canopy with both hands whilst trees appear ever closer a few feet below (tip from an old flying instructor – whatever else, always fly the aeroplane).  Rather than crash land, David appears to have parachuted to safety (perhaps he was influenced by a previous scrape in which he urged his colleague to, "eject, eject") – the canopy, apparently miraculously opening at ground level, just in time to save him.  Leaving his shredded silk festooned on a tree so that he can be easily located, David staggers off into shallow undergrowth and successfully evades capture by lots of incompetent Nazi soldiers.  So far that is, and I cannot wait for next week’s excitement.  Whatever will the army of BBC Equality Diversity and Inclusion consultants, sensitivity readers, and fact checkers come up with next?