'Is it just me or is everything a sham?' asks Charlie Brooker. The real world doesn't feel real any more, as though we're separated from it by a thick layer of Perspex: we can see it, but can't sense it. Perhaps it isn't there...
Take the war. Not the Afghan war, not the "war on terror", but the other one: Iraq. I call it a war, but really it's a TV show - a long-running and depressing one that squats somewhere in the background, humming away to itself; a dark smear in the Technicolor entertainment mural. We know it's happening - we catch glimpses of it happening - but we don't feel it any more. It's like a soap we don't watch, but keep vaguely up to speed with by osmosis.
Even as it unfolds, we have to strain to remember it's there. News stories about suicide bombers bringing death to Baghdad markets are as familiar as adverts for dog food. Our bored brains filter them out. Novelty and sensation - that's what our minds crave. Iraq just offers more of the same: death after death after death after death, until each death becomes nothing more than a dull pulse on a soundtrack; the throb of a neighbour's washing machine we learned to filter out months ago; the invisible ticking of a household clock. We'll notice if it stops, but not before. The average response to the rash of programmes marking five years since the start of the war is likely to be: "Hey, is that still happening? Bummer."
ITV1 are doing their bit with Rageh Omaar: Iraq By Numbers which, should you even detect its existence, is a violently dispiriting ground-level look at the life of the average Iraqi civilian. Rageh Omaar, of course, is the "Scud Stud" who became a minor celebrity back during the war's earlier, more exciting episodes. Because he's a celebrity, his name comes before that of the war in the programme's title: someone's decided you're more likely to tune in if you see the words "Rageh Omaar" in the EPG. Certainly worked on me.
In some ways, this feels like a comeback special: he left the BBC in 2006 to join Al-Jazeera's English-language service, and the majority of viewers won't have seen him since. So when he walks onscreen it's all, Ooh, it's him - the bloke from that thing. Used to stand on the balcony with all the bombs going off behind him and all sorts. Shock and awe or whatever it was. I used to like him. Think I'll watch this.
Which isn't Omaar's fault, of course. If he's "using" what celeb status he has, then he's doing so simply to encourage us to pay fresh attention to an ongoing tragedy that's grown too stale and too sad for us to even notice. To ease the viewer in gently, he pitches the show to us as a personal journey, not a stone-faced journalistic investigation. He meets one of the civilians who tore down Saddam's statue. He revisits a hotel where one of his cameramen was killed. He tours the Green Zone with some US troops. And he goes in search of his old friends.
Trouble is, seeking out old friends requires him to travel abroad, because so many of them have fled the country in fear of their lives. In Syria, he's reunited with one (his former driver), who was kidnapped and threatened. As his friend recounts his story, Omaar weeps on camera. Normally such a reaction would seem cynical and contrived: here, it feels justified and honest.
Interspersing each encounter are the numbers of the title: bald statistics served up as chilling graphics. Particularly striking is the figure regarding the total number of Iraqi dead - striking because it's so huge, and so vague. It lies somewhere between 150,000 and 1 million.
Between 150,000 and a million. That leaves 850,000 people who may be dead or alive. We simply don't know. They currently exist, or do not exist, within a cavernous margin of error. Our minds can't process this degree of horror. No wonder we change the channel. No wonder nothing feels real.
Rageh Omaar: Iraq By Numbers is on Monday, 10.35pm, ITV1
Take the war. Not the Afghan war, not the "war on terror", but the other one: Iraq. I call it a war, but really it's a TV show - a long-running and depressing one that squats somewhere in the background, humming away to itself; a dark smear in the Technicolor entertainment mural. We know it's happening - we catch glimpses of it happening - but we don't feel it any more. It's like a soap we don't watch, but keep vaguely up to speed with by osmosis.
Even as it unfolds, we have to strain to remember it's there. News stories about suicide bombers bringing death to Baghdad markets are as familiar as adverts for dog food. Our bored brains filter them out. Novelty and sensation - that's what our minds crave. Iraq just offers more of the same: death after death after death after death, until each death becomes nothing more than a dull pulse on a soundtrack; the throb of a neighbour's washing machine we learned to filter out months ago; the invisible ticking of a household clock. We'll notice if it stops, but not before. The average response to the rash of programmes marking five years since the start of the war is likely to be: "Hey, is that still happening? Bummer."
ITV1 are doing their bit with Rageh Omaar: Iraq By Numbers which, should you even detect its existence, is a violently dispiriting ground-level look at the life of the average Iraqi civilian. Rageh Omaar, of course, is the "Scud Stud" who became a minor celebrity back during the war's earlier, more exciting episodes. Because he's a celebrity, his name comes before that of the war in the programme's title: someone's decided you're more likely to tune in if you see the words "Rageh Omaar" in the EPG. Certainly worked on me.
In some ways, this feels like a comeback special: he left the BBC in 2006 to join Al-Jazeera's English-language service, and the majority of viewers won't have seen him since. So when he walks onscreen it's all, Ooh, it's him - the bloke from that thing. Used to stand on the balcony with all the bombs going off behind him and all sorts. Shock and awe or whatever it was. I used to like him. Think I'll watch this.
Which isn't Omaar's fault, of course. If he's "using" what celeb status he has, then he's doing so simply to encourage us to pay fresh attention to an ongoing tragedy that's grown too stale and too sad for us to even notice. To ease the viewer in gently, he pitches the show to us as a personal journey, not a stone-faced journalistic investigation. He meets one of the civilians who tore down Saddam's statue. He revisits a hotel where one of his cameramen was killed. He tours the Green Zone with some US troops. And he goes in search of his old friends.
Trouble is, seeking out old friends requires him to travel abroad, because so many of them have fled the country in fear of their lives. In Syria, he's reunited with one (his former driver), who was kidnapped and threatened. As his friend recounts his story, Omaar weeps on camera. Normally such a reaction would seem cynical and contrived: here, it feels justified and honest.
Interspersing each encounter are the numbers of the title: bald statistics served up as chilling graphics. Particularly striking is the figure regarding the total number of Iraqi dead - striking because it's so huge, and so vague. It lies somewhere between 150,000 and 1 million.
Between 150,000 and a million. That leaves 850,000 people who may be dead or alive. We simply don't know. They currently exist, or do not exist, within a cavernous margin of error. Our minds can't process this degree of horror. No wonder we change the channel. No wonder nothing feels real.
Rageh Omaar: Iraq By Numbers is on Monday, 10.35pm, ITV1
