IT was such a devastating blow to Scottish Television that it wiped millions off the company's stock market value. A few days ago, it was revealed that the end is nigh for Taggart, because ITV no longer wants to commission STV to make the series.
I should be outraged. How dare these suits in their swanky London offices butcher a part of Scotland's heritage? There's been a murder, and ITV is the culprit. Except that I'm actually not that bothered, because I'm sad to say that it was all very pr
edictable given the abysmal low to which STV has fallen.
The only real intrigue for me is how will they kill off the world's longest-running detective show? It's not as if Taggart can be "murdert" – after all, the man himself went to the great squad room in the sky 15 years ago. Lovely funeral he had, too, the actors' tears being for the great Mark McManus who made the part his own.
They should have killed off Taggart then, back in 1994, but it was too much of a cash cow for STV, and in truth, James MacPherson as Mike Jardine and Alex Norton as Matt Burke have done well to carry the show since, though Blythe Duff as Jackie Reid – she looks better now than she did when she joined in 1990 – is the real lynchpin of Taggart.
Slagging off Taggart will win me no pals. It's a bit like banning the Saltire from a work-desk and hoping nobody will notice. The show's a national treasure, awarded medals by Glasgow's Lord Provost – previous city fathers hated it for the brutal image it portrayed – and thus beyond reproach.
Don't get me wrong, there have been times when Taggart has been quite brilliant, especially in the era when STV's excellent head of drama Robert Love was finding new talent both on and behind the screen. Robert Carlyle, Billy Boyd, Dougray Scott and Peter Mullan all featured on the show early in their careers, and Stuart Hepburn, another Love discovery, is one of the best writers around.
Taggart has a fine cast of lead actors, and some clever writers, but to me the series became set in its ways after it transformed from its whodunnit roots to more of a simple procedural.
After 26 years, Taggart's time is over. And though it gave my actor brother Stevie and plenty others work, I can't say I'm sorry that it's going.
STV has the solution in its hands. It can put Taggart in a nice, wee Glaswegian retirement home and give us a real 'tec – more Rebus, please!
Except that won't happen, because our national commercial broadcaster has become a national disgrace. For some time now its output has been rubbish.
Always west-coast orientated, STV's failure to provide what viewers want across Scotland has been striking. It can plead poverty – we all do in the Scottish media, and it's for real – but there's no excuse for monotonous mediocrity.
It has no sport of any worth – Taggart is going the way of Scotsport – and no regular documentary strand, few single dramas and no soap opera, and this from the station that gave us Take the High Road.
Check the listings for this midweek. Apart from funded Gaelic programmes and the news, STV's home-grown contribution is The Hour each weekday and its political programmes about ten years of Holyrood and a Politics Now special.
It has talented broadcasters like Stephen Jardine and Bernard Ponsonby, but the executive suite at Cowcaddens appears to be populated by bears of little brain and no ambition.
Driven into debt-swamped penury by the overweening ambition of previous directors, STV has been bailed out by old enemy the BBC, which has commissioned 20 episodes of Antiques Road Trip, and by regulators Ofcom who have reduced their requirement for home-grown material to laughably minimal regulations.
STV says it has projects in the offing – well, it would say that, wouldn't it? We await them with interest.
If it fails to deliver, and quickly, the Westminster government should seriously consider taking away STV's licence and giving it to a company with ambition to match the spirit of the new Scotland.
Or else it should give ITV a slice of the licence fee, but only to create truly local television stations as in the US.
The technology is much cheaper now and committed local broadcasters should get the chance to do their thing for their city/region.
East Scotland TV anyone?
The full article contains 762 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
