GROWING UP IN SCOTLAND: A CENTURY OF CHILDHOOD, BBC2, 9pm
I WAS a bit hard on this series last week. Instead of conveying the joy and trouble of childhood it seemed mired in education policy. This week’s is far more colourful and enjoyable however, looking at the home and how it shaped, protected and confined childhood over the last century.
These days, nippers are cosseted and treasured (if their parents have the money and the mental well-being, we should add) and are ferried in cars to activities, but it was not always thus.
A century ago, children were seen and not heard, and “didn’t exist in their own right” until they became old enough to work.
We see they’ve now been liberated and cherished, but at what cost? Was the barefoot scamp playing in the back green happier than the modern child who’s not allowed out to play and forms online friendships?
But those barefoot scamps contended with war, disease and notorious slums. Yet their wealthier, healthier descendants have mental health worries, so who’s better off?
PRIME SUSPECT 1973, STV, 9pm PRIME Suspect might have run its course, having been broadcast for seven series, but this new series gives it a new twist.
It’s a prequel to the original, going back to the early career of Jane Tennison, played by Helen Mirren in the original series.
In this new outing, Tennison is a young probationary police officer, just 22, and starting out in her career in a world where sexism is not just accepted but expected.
Unfortunately, innovation stops there and the show retreats to the tired old cliché of having a young woman murdered. The victim is a prostitute – again a morbid cliché.
She is found in an underground car park and the crime gives the ambitious young WPC a chance to do some real police work instead of just making the tea.
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