As a TV producer, why not take even the slightest effort to make yourbroadcast something more than background wallpaper in the form of a televisionprogram? That question came to mind when watching The best of the 90 ‘s fromAVROTROS. It seemed like such an open target. Escapism and nostalgia are verywelcome, so before Nieuwsuur starts a little chat about Spice Girls, Furby’sand semolina pudding: please! But even with feather-light entertainment,minimal effort must be made.
The first episode consisted of edited images of random celebrities watchingclips of nineties clichés. Each speaker said no more than two sentences at atime, resulting in a succession of repetitive stanzas: “Girlpower, yes.” “Theintroduction of girl power, but really.” “Mel C, she is really number 1 withme.” “I really liked Sporty Spice.” “Yes no I thought Ginger was definitelythe coolest.” Mel B? I liked looking.” “Ginger Spice, I thought he was themost beautiful.” And everything that the viewer himself saw was retold. Aftera scene of Paul de Leeuw shooting a firecracker in a turkey, someone came intothe picture who said: “Yes, that turkey, a firecracker in it and just boom.”
Lazy and loveless. The pinnacle of sad irony came when the celebrities longedaloud for television programs that were memorable: “Those programs weresomething we all talked about or something, that was special.”
Later in the evening, such a fragment came along that will long echo in theminds of the viewers. For the last Winter guests Femke van der Laaninterviewed retired brain surgeon Henry Marsh at his home in London. In one ofhis selected fragments, he himself was seen years earlier in an understaffedhospital in Ukraine. A woman shows him the brain scans of her grandchild inthe consulting room. After studying, Marsh icily sighs matter-of-factly thatthere’s nothing they can do but wait for the child to die. Another doctortranslates and tears well up in the shocked woman’s eyes. “Life can be verycruel,” agrees Marsh mechanically. “Thank you,” she replies. “Thank you verymuch, I’m sorry I bothered you.” The whole thing takes a few minutes.
A neurosurgeon, Marsh explained apologetically to Van der Laan, has theseconversations almost every week. “And the difficult thing is that you don’tget feedback from patients on how you are doing.” He hoped he had gottenbetter at it.
It is addictive, performing risky operations. But to be able to do it, youhave to be detached from the patient as a human being during an intervention.And therein lies the danger of becoming numb. A doctor has unprecedented powerover a patient. “All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”When he got cancer himself, and returned to the hospital as a patient, helaughed at the role reversal. “Oh how the mighty have fallen!”
His (self-critical) insights into the surgeon’s life continued to fascinatethroughout the broadcast. He left the profession “with the passionateconviction that you should see an operation as a group activity.” And afterall, it hadn’t been mere vanity that motivated him. “What gives our workmeaning,” concluded Marsh, “is the lives of our patients.”
It was a beautiful end to a successful one Winter guests series. One pointto consider for next time: it is such a pity that only people who speak (good)English are eligible as guests. What a world would open up if we heard peoplein Portuguese, Arabic, Korean, Serbian. Then, if necessary, only once withless well-known interviewers.