| | One of the major
attractions of
consultancy is that it’s
a discipline about how
things work, and in
particular, how work
works. For something
most of us do, work is a
surprisingly mysterious
thing. Work is the dark
matter in our lives, yet
we’re oddly reluctant to
discuss it and have
little insight into
other people’s working
lives. I’m always struck
by how rarely the
workplace is used a
scene for TV drama
(unless you count our
endless fantasies of
police stations and
hospitals). It’s a rich
seam of human
interaction, yet it
mostly appears as a
vehicle for comedy,
generally featuring
dysfunctional males
(think Basil Fawlty and
David Brent)
embarrassing
themselves.
So I was intrigued
when the BBC screened a
new drama, Friends and
Crocodiles, which was
trailed as being about
working relationships,
and not only that, by
“one of our great TV
dramatists”, one Stephen
Poliakoff (I’d not come
across him, but
apparently he’s the one
who shows us How We Live
Today). The play was to
cover the period from
1981 to the present
day—by a happy
coincidence pretty much
my entire working life —
and charted the rising
and falling fortunes of
a businessman and his
secretary during one of
the most turbulent and
exciting periods of
British corporate
history.
I was sadly let down. | |
| |
| | books. What a shame the
play aired a couple of
days after Sony
announced it’s e-Ink
initiative.
The other character
is supposed to be a
self-made millionaire
and visionary genius,
but he never does any
work at all. You can
tell he’s a visionary
because he says things
like “Computers, they’re
gonna be Big” (actually
computers ended up
Small, but you know what
he meant), but all he
ever does is lounge
around on the lawn with
a brace of topless
floozies (how unlike,
how very unlike the home
life of our own dear Sir
Alan Sugar). Later he
loses all his money and
wanders around looking
grumpy in a leather
overcoat.
Being a glutton for
punishment, I had to
watch the documentary
the BBC had commissioned
to explain why Poliakoff
was such a great
dramatist. Bearded and
white-suited, he stomped
around cityscapes and
shopping malls, taking
everything in with his
beady dramatist’s eyes.
Dewy-eyed acolytes
praised his grasp of the
zeitgeist, one claiming
that this derived from
the fact that his father
had “watched the Russian
Revolution in his
pyjamas”. Another
praised his
“architectural sense” of
the City. Just to
demonstrate this,
Poliakoff took us to his
favourite spot, the
Great Hall of the
Natural History Museum,
which he described as an
“early kind of atrium”
(which must have come as
a surprise to any Roman | |
|
| | senators watching).
Nothing was getting
any clearer, until
someone alleged that
Poliakoff was incredibly
prescient because in a
1979 play someone tells
a young businessman “you
don’t really care about
anything” and describes
it as a foretaste of
things to come.
Poliakoff claims he’s a
bit of an anarchist: “I
like to challenge
conventional wisdom,” he
says. “I don’t believe
you should always follow
the latest fad.”
Friends and Crocodiles
ends in dotcom disaster,
which Poliakoff
apparently believes
could have been averted
if British corporations
had remained as
diversified
conglomerates.
I realised that
Poliakoff is adept, not
so much at capturing the
zeitgeist as reflecting
back a BBC executive’s
somewhat lop-sided view
of it. Corporate folk
are hollow, desperate
types, who care about
nothing but making money
by a mixture of flummery
and malice. Poliakoff
doesn’t really feel he
has to justify this, but
will occasionally mutter
“Mrs Thatcher” in the
tones of a 17th century
Puritan invoking the
Devil, assured that all
right-thinking people
will cross themselves
and usher their children
indoors.
For Poliakoff,
corporate life involves
huge rewards for very
little effort beyond
selling your soul.
Pretty nearly everyone
in his play reinvents
themselves as a member
of the establishment
(and is consequently | |
|
| | equipped with the mark
of Satan, a suit and a
mobile phone). In fact,
the theme of all his
plays is that the price
of success is a shallow
materialistic existence,
but that this can
occasionally be redeemed
by an encounter with a
“real” person who will
be quirky and feisty and
eccentric and creative
and generally have all
those human qualities
which are incompatible
with a job that requires
you to wear a tie.
Now I’m not
necessarily waving a
flag for corporate life.
But the last 20 years
have been a very rich
and turbulent period,
full of change and
drama, and consultants
have seen more of it
than most. Can’t we do
better than this
cardboard cut-out
version of events? It’s
not as if consultants
don’t sponsor the arts —
I can barely open a
theatre programme
without coming across a
clutch of consultancy
sponsors. It’s time to
buttonhole a few
dramatists and suggest
they start re-engaging
with everyday life.
Meanwhile I’m off to
re-read one of my
favourite books, Dombey
& Son by Dickens, which
covers a similarly
transformative period in
the life of the capital
to Friends and
Crocodiles and also
ends in a speculative
bubble. Unlike the
latter it contains
recognizable human
beings. Odd that a 19th
century novelist can
still do a better job of
reflecting “how we live”
than a 21st century
dramatist…
| |
|
| | By the time the
“management consultants”
appeared, described as
“young people sent to
make our lives
miserable”, I was in a
state of despair. You
can get some idea of the
crassness of the drama
from the fact that one
of the “consultants” had
appeared as a sort of
high-class hooker.
Geddit?
The consultants
didn’t do much, except
grill people in a
glass-walled box. It was
clear the writer had
very little idea what
consultants do; in fact
he didn’t appear to know
what anybody in
corporate Britain does.
The secretary character
goes from strength to
strength in the City,
but we never find out
exactly what it is she
actually does in her
corporate role (though
she always has the TV on
at her desk, which I
found strange. At one
point she claims to be
working for a venture
capital company, which
operates like a cross
between a Hoxton
creative agency and Pop
Idol. As hopefuls pitch
their business ideas to
the VCs, particular
scorn is heaped on
people peddling the
notion of “electronic
books”. In a documentary
screened immediately
afterwards, Poliakoff
takes special delight in
ridiculing the absurd
notion of electronic | |
|
Previous Page 
