Digging for victory ... The cast of Bonekickers. Photograph: BBC
As Barack Obama aims to make a large piece of political history, he has already achieved a little footnote in the chronicles of television: as the presidential candidate most dramatised by television even before the official election race begins.
Bonekickers (BBC1), the new yarn about archaeologists, from the team behind Life On Mars, features a black character who is a candidate for the White House. As this storyline would need to have been written and filmed before the Illinois politician who inspired it secured the Democratic nomination, the show's creators, Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh, must have been even more horrified than the Obama camp by Hillary Clinton's intermittent returns to contention.
But Obama had inspired a peak-time hero even before becoming a presidential candidate. Writers on The West Wing have admitted that Matt Santos, the Hispanic Congressman who bids for Martin Sheen's seat in seasons six and seven, was based on a then obscure mixed-race representative in Chicago.
Watched now, those episodes make spooky viewing, as Santos even uses phrases - such as "the audacity of hope" - that have become famous on the campaign trail. Indeed, as Santos's Republican rival, Arnold Vinick, is clearly indebted to the biography of John McCain, the sixth set of West Wings offers a sort of simulation of this autumn's election.
If you want to go back even further, it can be argued that American TV dreamed of Obama even before he entered politics: the series 24 had a black president years before it was a political possibility. But, then, Mrs Clinton, even if she never makes it to the White House as a politician, has already served there twice in fiction, inspiring the characters played by Joan Allen in The Contender and Geena Davis in Commander in Chief.
These prophetic plot-lines resulted from liberal wishing, but such examples of what might be called science-faction underline the unusual dramatic value of this election year.
Comments
3 July 2008 10:12AM
OBE Knickers Icke Bonkers
3 July 2008 12:45PM
Bonekickers just looks dire. After the dismal Ashes to Ashes, I'm inclined to think that Graham/Pharoah might be the current one-hit wonders of TV