Drinking for England

A pickled nation
Mike O'Connor previewsDrinking for England, SBS, Tuesday 10pmRock School, Channel 10, Wednesday 7.30pmHouse, Channel 10, Wednesday 8.30pm08sep05

DENIS believes that those who can produce documentary proof that they are regular heavy drinkers should be granted immunity from drink driving laws.Denis is retired but confesses that when he was working, he couldn't start the day without a couple of gin and tonics.

His routine now is to belt down four G and Ts at the pub and then drive home for lunch while he still can, then have a few more drinks.

Before you can say "pass the bottle" it's time for pre-dinner drinks followed by a post-prandial tipple and then a couple of cleansing scotches before wobbling off to bed.

The next day, he does it all again for he is one of the players in Drinking for England, a program which has won several awards for documentary excellence and which looks at the British drinking culture.

Our English friends may like to allude to the fondness of we Antipodeans for drink but as this program shows, they are more than partial to over-indulgence themselves.

Drinking for England has been described as the world's first documentary musical, using music and lyrics to underline the reliance on alcohol that permeates the UK.
Drinkers, young and old, are interviewed and filmed as they follow their daily drinking regimens.

There's the middle-aged guy who goes to the pub every night at 6 o'clock and is collected by his wife at 11pm, by which time he has consumed 14 pints of beer and half a dozen vodkas.
She doesn't think he has a drinking problem. If he did, he'd want to have a drink when he awoke in the morning but doesn't so he's fine. He just needs male company after being home alone in the house all day while she works. She gets home at 5pm, which is handy.

There is Jane – poor lonely Jane – who sits in her drab semi-detached house drinking sherry, chain smoking and staring into the middle distance.

Some of the punters embrace their drinking with a patently false bravado. None of them has a drinking problem. They just all choose to drink a lot.

Drinking for England does not follow the normal path of documentaries dealing with drug abuse. It lets the drinkers tell the story and uses music to lighten the mood, making its impact all the more powerful and effective.

In Rock School, ageing rocker Gene Simmons of KISS fame continues in his attempts to turn English children from a private school into a rock band.

This program has improved marginally since it began and those who watch next week's episode will at least be rewarded by the sight of the kids telling Simmons that he's a 55-year-old has-been in whose opinions they are not the least interested.

They also discover that their fledgling band will be the opening act for a Motorhead concert in London in a week's time. That episode, at least, should be worth catching.
House remains on the viewing list but by the slimmest of margins as the posturings of Dr Gregory House begin to grate.

The doctor is a diagnostician, amateur psychiatrist and philosopher who likes nothing better than to display his intellectual strength by thinking aloud on the foibles of his colleagues and the wider world.

House, of course, is a rebel. We know this because he doesn't wear a white coat and only shaves every three days. Edgy stuff!

Why he has not by now been wrapped in a straitjacket by his fellow doctors, sedated and locked in a broom cupboard remains a mystery.

Next week, an unknown illness strikes and all concerned are perplexed as to its nature. There's no free Valium for guessing who gets it right.

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