The BBC cares more about Asian aunties from Bradford and a rapper called Big Zuu than it does about the Greatest Story Ever Told

Mar 28, 2024 by Jill

by Quentin Letts, Daily Mail:

This is Holy Week, the most sombre, ultimately dazzling seven days in the Christian year, but you would not know it from our national broadcaster.

On Good Friday, the day that marks the Crucifixion, BBC One will be showing Wallace and Gromit’s Were-Rabbit adventure and a 2021 American comedy, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. That will be followed by some drama about a clairvoyant. If you suspect BBC One is laughing at belief in eternal life, you might not be wrong.

The BBC, whose network goes into overdrive about secular events such as International Women’s Day or Black History Month, is hardly exerting itself for Easter. It gets more excited about the Grand National.

Its Easter programming feels perfunctory and patronising. Live TV coverage of worship will come from a single cathedral, Canterbury, where the Archbishop, Justin Welby, will be giving an 8am sermon and a mid-morning Easter address. Will he bang on about Rwanda?

There will also be a performance of Bach’s St John Passion from Cardiff, the Pope’s Urbi et Orbi message and a Songs of Praise with Aled Jones, but that will be at lunchtime when most of us will be busy.

Radio 2 will offer the Archbishop of York discussing cooking tips with a victim of the Post Office Horizon scandal and a cast member from Call the Midwife; on Radio 4, meanwhile, the Bishop of Newcastle will be reflecting on ‘the significance of the iconic Northumberland tree that was cut down last year’.

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