Art Matters With Melvyn Bragg review – a shallow, unenlightening waste of time and money

Art Matters With Melvyn Bragg review – a shallow, unenlightening waste of time and money

This chummy, ineffective look at the arts crisis offers no solutions. And by featuring only one contributor aged under 50, it is itself part of the problem

Culture, thinks Melvyn Bragg, is not a bonus feature of reality: it actually is life itself. Or – as the veteran broadcaster puts it in his new Sky Arts documentary – art “isn’t the cherry on the cake; it’s the cake”. To this end, the 84-year-old interviews a series of modern greats, including Tracey Emin, Lenny Henry, Armando Iannucci and Antony Gormley, about their careers and the crucial role art has played in their lives. Bragg also has a story of his own: after having a nervous breakdown at the age of 13, it was “heavy reading” – ie consuming challenging books – that led to his recovery.

As a premise for a programme, it feels rather general, slightly indulgent and a bit extraneous. Bragg – who made his name as the host of the seminal arts programme The South Bank Show – is preaching to the choir here; anyone tuning in to Sky Arts presumably already subscribes to this worldview. Suitably, the chats featured tend to be gratingly self-satisfied. Although I suppose everyone involved does have good reason to be extremely pleased with themselves: they have all winkled fame, fortune and acclaim from the pursuit of their artistic passions.

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