Glee: it’s a musical comedy drama full of misfits

I share all of this with you only to illustrate how relatively easy the BBC had things with this week’s Obama’s America: The Price of Freedom, and Obama’s America: End of the Dream? — and yet still messed up.

Going out on Tuesday and Thursday, these two hour-long specials looked at, respectively, America’s history of overseas military campaigns and America’s history of stock market crashes. Both were written and presented by the respected, sexy historian Simon Schama. Yes. That’s right. It was Schama — on Obama. YET IT WAS NOT CALLED “SCHAMA ON OBAMA”. Additionally, the listing did not read: “To tell a story that’s filled with ... drama. Using the perspective of a ... widescreen panorama. Of a man trying to bring a country to ... dharma. Soundtrack by (for the bits in the Eighties) Bananarama.”

In a pitiless moment of wholesale titling pragmatism, it was given some shruggingly whevs title, instead — a title that, frankly, Nick Clegg could have chucked in. Coming in a three-month span also encompassing Richard One Foot in the Grave Wilson presenting a show about death that WASN’T called “I Don’t Bereave It!”, I sometimes think I might be the only person left in Britain who cares about giving programmes ridiculous titles. Do you know who I feel like? Jack Hargreaves in Country Matters, in 1982, showing viewers a Lancastrian pig-circumcising hoe — certain in the sad knowledge that there wouldn’t be anyone left who cares about these things by 2010.

Schama set out his stall pretty early on — asking if history could teach us the likely outcome of the current military operation in Afghanistan. Schama was convinced that the nearest historical parallel to Obama’s situation was that of Harry Truman — a man unexpectedly made President after Roosevelt died of a stroke.

“I felt as if the Moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me,” Truman said, before beseeching reporters:, “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.”

It was less, “Yes — we can” than “Shit — I’m going to have to”. But, like Obama, Truman was then faced with an overseas military intervention that he felt he could not morally back out of: in this case, Korea.

“North Korea was a rogue state, with nuclear toys,” Schama said, dressed in black leather, snaking across a mountainside in South Korea, and clearly relieved to be finally doing a series that didn’t involve three-day-long shoots in draughty Northumbrian castles in November, quacking on about Henry I.

Going on to quickly run through the Korean War’s “bad” points (two million dead, regarded as the “forgotten war” in the US) and “good” points (democracy in South Korea, M*A*S*H), Schama seemed to conclude briskly that Obama should continue his campaign in Afghanistan — but that unless it was carried out in conjunction with other countries he might be “destined to be the man who presides over the end of America’s supremacy”.

And this was because — and here I hypothesise — if it all goes wrong, Obama needs to be able to point at Angela Merkel and go, “It was her idea TOO!” We need to screw up Afghanistan together. America can’t be left to do it on its own.

There was a similarly swift conclusion to End of the Dream? on Thursday. In a nutshell, Schama reckons Obama needs to get jiggy on re-instating banking regulations that Reagan and Clinton took a pick-axe to. Although even the deaf, dumb and blind kid from Pinball Wizard would have come to this conclusion years ago, it was still useful to have Schama run through the fairly conclusive stats: every time the US has an unregulated banking industry, people end up living in cardboard boxes, and, subsequently, some form of lachrymose and/or blues music has a massive resurgence.

It was essentially a clips-package for market interventionists to nod along to. But it did include the speech in which Bill Clinton says, “We can really widen the circle of opportunity”, which is always good for a knowing smirk and a “Yeah, I bet you can, Bill”.

Of greater intrigue was By the People: The Election of Barack Obama — a documentary that followed Obama from November 2007 until the night of the 2008 election. While there was a fair bit of seductive Obama domestica, Obama playing basketball, Obama talking to Malia (“Daddy, I had a LOT of chocolate today”), Obama’s niece going “Uncle Rocky has BIG EARS” — the main intimacy and revelation was on the actual campaigning process.

“Is there anyone here over the age of 30?” Obama asked on walking into the campaign headquarters for the Ohio primary. The wall had a poster with “CAMP OBAMA” written on it. Earlier, his volunteers had been practising the chant “I got an ‘O’, you got a ‘BAMA’! I got an ‘O’, you got a ‘BAMA’!” It’s quite catchy. I’ve been singing it to the kids.

By the People was really about how a generation of incredibly impassioned, politicised campaigners suddenly materialised and fought, tooth and nail, for an ostensibly unlikely candidate.

At one point during a vital moment in the Iowa caucus, a young Asian woman, breastfeeding a five-month-old baby, came bombing out of the voting room and into the toilets. “I need someone to vote Barack Obama!” she hollered, holding the door open. “Now! Someone who’ll come and vote Barack Obama!”

Whenever Obama spoke, the queues to see him snaked round the block. There were people in the audience so excited that they held their bicycles above their heads and waved them around, like flags.

All props to them — it’s a way of being excited that had previously lain uninvented.

By the night of the election, the scruffily dressed volunteers with Nokias from 2007 had graduated to good suits and BlackBerrys and were getting ready to walk into the White House. Rarely have young, enthusiastic, idealistic people looked hotter.

Finally, Glee. I’ve long had the theory that you can tell when your friends have finally met their ideal partner when they suddenly go a bit quiet, reticent and monosyllabic. After a date with some unsuitable a***-wad, they’re all chatty, gabbling away nineteen-to-the-dozen and projecting left, right and centre (“He was wearing a blue shirt — and you know what my theory is on people who wear blue shirts!”).

When they eventually meet someone who’s actually quite pleasant and appropriate, however, they kind of ... run out of things to say.

“He’s just ... really lovely,” they sigh, unforthcomingly. “We went for some food. It was ... very nice.”

And then they sit there, all pinkly glowing, with their mouth oddly crimped up — like they’re trying to stop themselves from bursting into a thunderous post-coital version of Oklahoma! — and never give you any decent sex-gossip ever, ever again.

Well, I have to say, I feel kind of the same way about Glee. Our first date on Monday was so successful that all I can say about it is, “It’s a musical comedy-drama full of misfits, homosexuals and bitches. It’s ... lovely.” I think I realised we might end up living together seven minutes in, when — during a quick panning shot around a scene set in an office — I saw a sign above a machine with “YOU MUST BE TRAINED BY KEN TANAKA TO USE THIS SHREDDER” written above it.

Glee centres on the teacher Will Schuester’s (Matthew Morrison) attempts to resurrect the glee club in his high school. With it moribund and totalling only five members — all psychotic in their own way — Schuester’s big brainwave is to plant drugs in the locker of the Justin Timberlake-alike star of the football team, Finn (Cory Monteith), and blackmail him into joining.

Finn risks considerable danger in joining the glee club, even under duress. Because this is your usual American high school, it is considered intolerably effeminate to be a member. As Finn explains: “Last month [the football team] held down one oftheir team-mates and shaved off his eyebrows — just because he watches Grey’s Anatomy.”

But Glee knows that there is no oppressive patriarchal system that can’t be seen off with a high-camp show-choir version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing and the basic premise “It’s like High School Musical, but written by evil people”.

I think me and Glee are going steady now.

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