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?