“Less war, more committee meetings” sums up the EU. Does this make for good television?
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskPolitics often makes for good television. The corridors of power are naturally rich in scheming, conflict and comically colossal egos. A fast-talking, starry-eyed version of American politics kept viewers riveted through seven seasons of “The West Wing”. “Borgen” made Danish politics seem more conspiratorial than it probably is.
“Parlement”, a joint French, German and Belgian production sadly only available for now in those countries , revolves around a young assistant to a Euro-who gets caught up in the Heath-Robinson procedures that turn ideas into law. Even a plain, unembellished description of the process would be dismissed by outsiders as implausible.
Satire turns out to be a good prism through which to inspect the Brussels bubble—perhaps because it is so close to the truth. In “Yes Minister”, a British classic from the 1980s, civil servants run rings around hapless ministers, showing the world where power really lies. More recently “The Thick of It” and its American offshoot, “Veep”, have elicited chuckles by depicting politicians who think themselves destined for greatness getting bogged down in day-to-day mishaps.
The show is befittingly multilingual, flitting between French, English, German and a smattering of theis impeccably rendered, unsurprisingly given that a couple of Eurocrats are among the show’s writing team . One advantage of the European Parliament’s nomadic ways is that one of its two debating chambers is always empty, and so can be turned over to film crews. Familiar faces spring up as cameos, albeit featuring “stars” recognisable only tonerds.
Even such fictional potshots have irked some in Brussels, a thin-skinned place that too often confuses legitimate criticism of some misguidedpolicy with an attack on the entire idea of European integration. Better would be to recognise the show’s welcome irreverence as disguised flattery: only the powerful are worth satirising. Brussels is easily annoyed about being mocked, but its true fear is being ignored.
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