Diff'rent strokes

"Dumbing down is not a prerequisite of culture being more accessible. That is a lie perpetuated by those who want to sell us shit." So sagely sayeth Lee Hall with respect to the Pitmen Painters, the subjects of his recent play. So there was a certain irony in the fact that the episode of ITV's new arts programme Perspectives focusing on those remarkable amateurs was presented by Robson Green, as though TV execs decided the pill needed sugaring with a dusting of celebrity in order to be palatable. It's also crassly predictable to discover that the series is sponsored by a wine manufacturer, clearly eager to align the brand with culture and sophistication...

In fairness, though, the host of Channel 5's Extreme Fishing wasn't a completely arbitrary choice - not only a Northumbrian but the son of a miner, so at least he had some close personal and emotional connection to the place and his subjects. As a result, the focus was primarily on the human aspect of the story - the individuals who worked long and arduous shifts in cramped, dirty, dark and dangerous conditions but who then scrubbed up and went out to meet up and paint, fixated with the importance and value of self-improvement.

This meant that the paintings were only glimpsed in passing, their detail and their differences (as well as their similarities) glossed over - though this particular viewer subsequently vowed to make amends by going to Woodburn Museum next time I'm home. There looked to be a clarity, freshness and documentary honesty to them, as you might expect from artists whose imaginations weren't crippled by concepts and theories or by an acute awareness of precedents and the whole weight of art history.

Meanwhile, what Ashington Council will have made of the programme is anyone's guess - on the one hand, it might provoke people to visit, but on the other Green's characterisation of Ashington as a town struggling for identity in the post-pit age was classic broad-brush "grim oop North" stuff.