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With friends and crocodiles like these
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Friends and Crocodiles was one of those television plays we were meant to think was seriously important. Important because it was by Stephen Poliakoff who is said to be the leading TV dramatist of our time (how many are there?). Important because it was the first in a trilogy that offered, as BBC publicity put it, "a panoramic view of society in the grip of cataclysmic change".
This was to be 'the big one' - offering an overview of modern Britain over the past quarter century, covering business, society and a bit of politics. But was it really important?
It was the story of a man who was mega-rich at the beginning of the 1980s, spending his money on a stately home and wild parties. He then lost his wealth while his secretary - the sensible and practical one - moved on to a new career in venture capitalism. The wheel
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| Poliakoff’s idea of business in the 80s and 90s seems limited to flamboyant property millionaires |
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of fortune kept turning for these two characters as we went through to the 1990s.
Poliakoff's writing is skillful. The characters develop. But his idea of business in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be limited to flamboyant property millionaires, the antics of venture capitalists as they try to forecast the future, the misguided closure of old industries, and then the dotcom boom-and-bust. This is like saying that the Church is about funny clothes and savage wars. It tells us what has been on the surface or made the news pages. It obscures the reality rather than revealing it.
It obscures the fact, for instance, that any country which wishes to grow in prosperity must allow old industries to change and, yes, in some cases, die. Some of my own forbears in the 19th century were in the business of collecting and distributing nails made by hand. Does Poliakoff think it was wrong for that business to die, replaced by machine- 
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News & Comment: News & Politics
