I wonder what can be more boring than those people who describe every detail of their car journey and then follow up by describing the alternative routes they might have taken, but didn't? And what is more boring than all those interminable documentaries on topics you never knew you didn't care about till now? So BBC2's new four-part show The Motorway: Life in the Fast Lane was well on the road to boring. Thankfully, it took a detour at the traffic lights.
Like all good observational documentaries, this was really about the people. The frustrated commuters, the roadside residents and most of all the bloke whose job it is to pick up rubbish at the side of the lay-by. The Motorway captured all this, but also the strangeness, the mystery and, yes, even the glamour of a lonely stretch of the M6 on a wet night, when the shiny black tarmac glows orange in the maintenance vehicle headlights.
I think this doco is a bleak picture of choked-up Britain i.e. more and more cars, less space, no one happy, out-of-control lorries, the air filled with decibels and anger, airborne phlegm, driver Tizer. The only thin slice of joy among the misery was when the Tarmacer brought a caramelised onion quiche along to share out among the nightshift workers.
