‘Oil is everything’: Burn Up on BBC2
“Doubt is our product. We manufacture doubt.” So says Mack, the bastard PR-lobbyist in last night’s BBC2 climate change drama, Burn Up.
It wasn’t a bad attempt at taking on climate change in a dramatic made-for-TV format. The first turns at addressing a new social/political phenomena are always going to be a little cliched. Some of the first literary attempts failed by being too directly about climate change. Maggie Gee’s The Ice People, for example, and the 2nd and 3rd books of Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy. Compare to the later mastery of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which doesn’t mention the issue directly, not once.
Burn Up didn’t fail in the same way. It’s TV, not literature, and can be saved by drama. Written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) and produced by the makers of Spooks, it has the pedigree.
However, it was played out by numbers: the bastard-lobbyist, the innocent fresh renewables woman, even (especially) the Lady MacBeth wife of the powerful but cracking-under-the-pressure of deceit, king in all this, the new Chairman of Arrow Oil, Tom McConnell (played by Rupert-Penry Jones). And the numbers mean:
You don’t want to get the facts too wrong. Take methane for example. It is incontrovertible for what we know that methane is 23 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. It was a fact so certain that the Oxford scientist Richard Langham used it twice, once in Congress.
But you also want to squeeze in everything you’ve read. Inuits, the Tar Sands, oil denialists, greenwash, Congo Delta, renditions, tristesse on Iraq, Kyoto 2 (in Calgary, rather than the real one in Copenhagen) ireregular solar activities, the discredited scientist isolating himself through the use of jargon, in comparison to the slick PR of the business community. The programme read like a Who’s Who of the characteristics of the climate debate. The UK Climate Change Bill even got a look in: “pissing in the wind” was the verdict from Philip Crowley, the hired mercenary a synecdoche for the ‘neutral’ civil service. Read this against the production comapny’s promo quote about the ‘realistic’ script:
Alchemy CEO Carrie Stein: “Climate change and environmental issues affect us all, so Burn Up will strike a chord with every viewer. Simon Beaufoy has constantly updated his research so our script is as current and realistic as today’s front-page news.”
He could probably have benefited from staying a little bit away from the papers.
The last half-hour got a little slow. The trip to the Tundra to see for themselves the methane release (note how the scientific proof to turn the oil exec was centred on methane, not CO2?) looked a little too 4×4 Ad Meets James Bond. The doe-eyed Neve Campbell sleeping safely in the warmth of the 4×4, protected by her bad-man turning good Bond. Sorry, McConnell. The pictures of the car driving across the ice was straight out of a Lexus ad.
And the pressure. It came from the Green Congress (identified through accents as the EU’s appearance) and one Inuit scientist, who having tried everything she could to be heard through the science (story = science doesn’t talk) sets herself on fire in front of the Law Courts. Her message to McConnell before he gives his testimony: “When you lie, think of me.”
Immolation is a powerful symbol, especially when it cuts to a kid screaming. There was a very clear dramatic strategy of connecting the children of the Inuit with the child of the Arrow Oil chairman (twice: our Tom not only had a child of the chairman, he married one).
The immolation stood out for me as the single diversion from the storyline gleaned from the pages of Science, the national newspapers and pub conversation. To summon the image of Jan Palach in 1969, resisting the invasion and occupation by Russia of Czechoslovakia, was an interesting strategy for the storyline. It was a powerful symbol of the inequity in weaponry between local community and big business: “slow death” or “quick suicide” the Iniuit woman asks–there’s no choice. And of course she covers herself in oil. And then sets herself alight, But while this is a catalyst, this isn’t enough: they need to see another ‘Burn Up’, this time the methane, to really believe it’s happening.
BBC Commissioning Editor for Drama Lucy Richer pitched the programme at its announcement as:
“Burn Up is a highly authored piece wholly of this unique moment in time. The exciting mix of US, Canadian and UK talent, the awesome backdrop of the Canadian wilds combined with Simon’s taut and provocative script makes for an epic proposition.”
The point is: it’s not “wholly unique” moment. To misquote Eamonn Andrews, this is our life. Now, for the next hundred, two hundred, a thousand years. The backdrop was the Canadian wilds AND the Tar Sands megalith oil extraction plant (hugely controversial and current). Which is why there wasn’t so much rush to get every fact and character into the plot.
Perhaps the least convinving element of the programme was not the Saudi Arabia subplot (not enough oil under the sands) but its fundamental plot: the ease at which the brusk oil company chairman swings from trusted young energised chairman into eco-warror. But hey, this is drama. Will be interesting to see the second part on Friday and if this becomes any more convincing
What do you think? Less is more, even in drama? Have a look at this video on the Tar Sands project, and tell me which was more dramatic. BBC2’s Burn Up, or this?
