In search of the gospel truth

The postmodern habit of regarding the truth as relative, or even non-existent, hasn’t caught on in television. The innovative programmes of this decade have been rooted in the notion that the truth is knowable. The grip that reality shows have on their audiences depends on a belief that the acidic effect of living with a dozen other people in a “house” or on an island, under surveillance, will burn away the falsity of the faces we put on in public, and reveal an essence that the audience will reward.

Even the intelligentsia channel BBC4 thinks truth exists: the search for the truth was the backbone of the critic Andrew Graham-Dixon’s quest in Who Killed Caravaggio? (Sunday). The artist, dead at 38 in 1610, was, like his English coeval Christopher Marlowe, accounted as a brawler, a sexual adventurer and an “overreacher”; one whose characters and figures strain after an intensity of feeling or achievement or cruelty that even the genius of their creators cannot quite capture. Like Marlowe’s, Caravaggio’s death is a mystery, and Graham-Dixon used the giallo (“yellow” – Italian for a mystery) to tour the places – Rome, Naples, Malta, Sicily – where Caravaggio lived his tumultuous and triumphant career, right up to the beach at Tuscany’s Porto Ercole, where he may have died.

The artist, said Graham-Dixon, “painted some of the most moving spiritual paintings in the history of western art – but what I want to know is – where’s his body?” Thus we are led through the works with the promise of a resolution that Wallander, or Rebus, or (coming on Sunday!) Sherlock Holmes might give.

But it did get us to the paintings, such as the wonderful pair in Rome’s Santa Maria del Popolo – “Conversion on the Way to Damascus” and the stupendous “Crucifixion of St Peter”, the former with a horse in the top half of the painting, its backside pointing pointedly at an assumption by Annibale Carracci, a lesser master. Still, as a bookish monsignor in Malta, quizzed on Caravaggio’s fate, responded, “Who knows?” Graham-Dixon ended up not knowing either.

Also mining for truth this past week was Bruce Forsyth, who occupies a secure “much-loved” spot and is presently toying with the BBC, and his fans, as to whether or not he will introduce the next series of Strictly Come Dancing. I certainly hope so: I like Brucie very much, and his search for roots (Who Do You Think You Are?, BBC1 Monday) deepened the affection. The search centred on a forebear called Joseph Forsyth Johnson, who rose from undergardener in a great house in Victorian England to being a major figure in park planning and construction in the US: an individual study in the possibilities of the New World. He also showed an underside to Victorian propriety: he fathered two large parallel families on opposite sides of the Atlantic, in ignorance of each other.

Forsyth’s researches led to his being a human bridge between the descendants. Much of the interest was in the revelation of Brucie’s character – that is, of the most relentlessly cheery comic host of the postwar period. He started in show business at 14, which means he has 68 years under the lights. He turned out to be convivial, proud of his great-grandfather’s achievements and clucking at his irresponsibility: “He let his family down, and he let himself down.” And that’s the truth.

Celebrities carry these ancestor-discovery programmes. Celebrities carry an increasing amount of TV now: no sign of that stopping. Still, Jonathan Ross’s brand of celebrity worship has gone from the BBC (Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, BBC 1 Friday July 16). His final show was a kind of signature, a choice of celebrities – the US actor Mickey Rourke, the Hong Kong actor-stunt man Jackie Chan and the footballer David Beckham, with closing number from Roxy Music – all ageing in their careers. Two – Rourke and Beckham – had staged (several) comebacks, and were still up there.

Ross has come back from a low point after his C4 show in the 1980s, to wealth and fame at the BBC – a state-sponsored rescue, mink-lined. Now he has to come back again, on ITV (he’ll be lucky). He wobbled towards tears when he said goodbye, saying, “Sometimes, maybe I’ve seemed a bit arrogant and out of control. But I’ve never come in here and not felt grateful and lucky and honoured.” Arrogance and out-of-control-ness (rather than gratitude) have been his thing: in his sixth decade, he will – as has Rourke – find it harder to make a mint from it.

Mitchell and Webb (BBC2 Tuesday) have returned for a new series. Their wit works at times, but at others – like a sketch on two TV presenters who have sunk down the celeb hierarchy till they comment on dog poker on an obscure channel, and another on magic pills – teeters between comedy and self-indulgence. So do all the shows based on two men and a script, as in (Alexander) Armstrong and (Ben) Miller and Matt Lucas and David Walliams’ Little Britain – though the first of these is more reliably comic and the second more reliably self-indulgent.

To repeat: for true wit, see Rev (BBC2 Monday). Last week’s episode saw the Rev Smallbone long for the media success of a rival vicar – and reconcile himself, at the end, to his modesty. His God is elusive, even capricious, but it’s his truth and he’s stuck with it. From that firm base comes the comedy.

john.lloyd@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/lloyd