Is the BBC so scared of Frankie Boyle offending viewers that they have banished him to iPlayer for this one-off post-mortem? Or have they decided that now that the Scottish Referendum is done and dusted not enough people are interested in the subject to warrant putting this out in the traditional way? Or maybe it’s a sneaky plan to drive viewers online. I’d have certainly thought this semi-serious talking shop deserved to be aired on Scottish television.
Frankie Boyle's Referendum Autopsy is a good show but it does have its drawbacks. Mainly the tone. Is it supposed to be serious or satirical? Boyle, who was firmly in the yes camp, takes on, shock horror, two women – Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan – to debate and crack jokes about independence. Both women are funny as you might expect, but I’m not sure how much they advanced the argument for staying together. Maybe they weren’t as passionate as their host. As Boyle notes about them, “it’s not your life being ruined.”
It might have helped, of course, if they could have found a famous funny Scot, maybe even a famous Scottish woman, to take Boyle on. Instead he has all the best lines, describing Dr Who as a typical Scot – “an old man armed with a screwdriver dragging young women into a phone box”. So Boyle gets the biggest laughs even if he doesn’t always have the best argument,
One doesn’t, however, watch Frankie Boyle to hear serious debate. One tunes in to hear outrageous one-liners and there are plenty of those. Though very little that might upset the staff downstairs if it was broadcast post-watershed. Presumably if the Mail wants to put the boot in about licence-payers’ money being spent on smutty humour it can crank up its steam-powered broadband and watch this anyway.
If this is a tentative attempt to reposition Boyle as a more mainstream TV personailty it slightly succeeds. He does a decent job discussing the bias of the media with former Scotsman editor Tim Luckhurst and is also surprisingly generous and restrained when he interviews an eight-year-old on his views on Scotland – favourite Scottish thing? “shortbread” – before, presumably the eight-year-old is whisked straight out of the theatre and the swearing can start again.
Boyle certainly has a pretty good idea of what people think of him: “There are many people who consider me a cunt.” I’d love to see a vote on that to see if this programme changes people’s opinions at all. Maybe a little swing but no seismic turnaround.
Frankie Boyle's Referendum Autopsy is on BBC iPlayer here.
