The Swedish detective series Wallander is a contemporary television phenomenon. Each episode is 90 minutes long, panning slowly across a grey landscape with a music track that gets more morose by the minim.

The tension rises by imperceptible notches to a point where my teeth sink into the armchair. There is nothing like it in television drama, at least in the Swedish original (a British remake, with Kenneth Branagh as the world-weary detective, paled by comparison). Much of the dialogue consists of ‘tak’ and ‘bro’. I am, in case you hadn’t guessed, hooked.

So it came as an irritant to discover that the series creator, Henning Mankel, is one of 11 Swedes (including composer Dror Feiler and theologian Ulf Camesund) on the politically contentious and tragically impeded naval aid convoy to Gaza.

Now I am not in the least bothered by Mankel’s take on Palestine, any more than I am by Valery Gergiev’s on Vladimir Putin or Vanessa Redgrave’s on Trostsky. Art is art and life is life and most of us can bring down the mental shutters quite smartly between one and the other. That attitude, however, is sustainable only until something goes wrong. Today’s attack changed everything.

I very much hope that Mankel and his Swedish companions survived the Israeli boarding assault unscathed. I look forward to seeing their homecoming press conference, to hearing of their experiences and sharing their outrage. Whether I share their views or their priorities is neither here nor there. For the moment, I am just concerned for their safe deliverance.

And yet I am, at the same time, irritated. Nothing stronger than irritation, just a mild irk of knowing that I can never again watch Wallander with such innocent pleasure or suspension of disbelief. Mankel, its creator, has intruded into my perception of the work.

It is never a good idea for a writer to become the story. And in this case, the story is greater and more contorted than anything Mankel has invented in his TV plotlines. The issue here, for Israelis and Palestinians, is existential. It makes Wallander seem trivial. I shall miss it. 

The Swedish detective series Wallander is a contemporary television phenomenon. Each episode is 90 minutes long, panning slowly across a grey landscape with a music track that gets more morose by the minim.

The tension rises by imperceptible notches to a point where my teeth sink into the armchair. There is nothing like it in television drama, at least in the Swedish original (a British remake, with Kenneth Branagh as the world-weary detective, paled by comparison). Much of the dialogue consists of ‘tak’ and ‘bro’. I am, in case you hadn’t guessed, hooked.

So it came as an irritant to discover that the series creator, Henning Mankel, is one of 11 Swedes (including composer Dror Feiler and theologian Ulf Camesund) on the politically contentious and tragically impeded naval aid convoy to Gaza.

Now I am not in the least bothered by Mankel’s take on Palestine, any more than I am by Valery Gergiev’s on Vladimir Putin or Vanessa Redgrave’s on Trostsky. Art is art and life is life and most of us can bring down the mental shutters quite smartly between one and the other. That attitude, however, is sustainable only until something goes wrong. Today’s attack changed everything.

I very much hope that Mankel and his Swedish companions survived the Israeli boarding assault unscathed. I look forward to seeing their homecoming press conference, to hearing of their experiences and sharing their outrage. Whether I share their views or their priorities is neither here nor there. For the moment, I am just concerned for their safe deliverance.

And yet I am, at the same time, irritated. Nothing stronger than irritation, just a mild irk of knowing that I can never again watch Wallander with such innocent pleasure or suspension of disbelief. Mankel, its creator, has intruded into my perception of the work.

It is never a good idea for a writer to become the story. And in this case, the story is greater and more contorted than anything Mankel has invented in his TV plotlines. The issue here, for Israelis and Palestinians, is existential. It makes Wallander seem trivial. I shall miss it. 

Germany’s rare victory in the Eurovision Song Contest – its second in 55 years – was predicted last Monday by the UK trade magazine, Music Week. Good call. An MW feature on the reviving German music market tipped Lena Meyer-Landrut, a Universal-signed number one hit in six countries, to grab the crown. Google and Der Spiegel also claimed prescience.

Once she finishes school-leaving exams this summer, Lena, 19,  wants to act. That seems a good career move, because she cannot read music, can barely hold a vocal line and speaks in a Martian English accent. What won the public heart is her girl-next-door naivety and the lack of hardcore gimmicks in her almost embarassingly amateur act.

She is a not quite the Singing Nun, a previous Euro winner, but she makes a refreshing change from the Eurotrash standards of recent years – not to mention the tedious over-exertions of Andrew Lloyd Webber to manufacture a UK winner. Germany won by putting global marketing muscle behind a rising national icon, potentially the next Steffi Graf. It was helped by the absence of several countries that could not afford to participate.  

Britain, misjudging the recessional mood with over-choreographed 1970s style, came last.

Germany’s rare victory in the Eurovision Song Contest – its second in 55 years – was predicted last Monday by the UK trade magazine, Music Week. Good call. An MW feature on the reviving German music market tipped Lena Meyer-Landrut, a Universal-signed number one hit in six countries, to grab the crown. Google and Der Spiegel also claimed prescience.

Once she finishes school-leaving exams this summer, Lena, 19,  wants to act. That seems a good career move, because she cannot read music, can barely hold a vocal line and speaks in a Martian English accent. What won the public heart is her girl-next-door naivety and the lack of hardcore gimmicks in her almost embarassingly amateur act.

She is a not quite the Singing Nun, a previous Euro winner, but she makes a refreshing change from the Eurotrash standards of recent years – not to mention the tedious over-exertions of Andrew Lloyd Webber to manufacture a UK winner. Germany won by putting global marketing muscle behind a rising national icon, potentially the next Steffi Graf. It was helped by the absence of several countries that could not afford to participate.  

Britain, misjudging the recessional mood with over-choreographed 1970s style, came last.

Given that it’s illegal to sell a polyester shirt as silk, I struggle to understand why so many record companies think it’s okay to push out pop trash on their classical labels. And then they have the effrontery to be amazed when those labels lose their once-loyal public.

The history of crossover is short and nasty. It began in the 1990s when the CD boom faded and most shops still had classical shelves. Fill those racks with more popular material, ran the argument, and you maintain market share and profitability.

It was short-termism at its worst, replacing symphonies with slush, but the tactic continues even now when there are few record shops left, let alone ones with classical shelves. So why do labels do it?

Well, one crossover album in a hundred still makes a mint so executives believe it’s worth playing the lottery in the hope of hitting the jackpot. The real reason, though, is a refinement of the original deception.

The adjective ‘classical’ suggests something worthwhile, uplifting, exclusive. Attach it to any musician and its boosts their prestige, gets them onto better and broader radio outlets. It can also give them an aura as public benefactor and educator. Witness the late-life resurrection of Sting and Elvis Costello. 

The downside is that it drains the vitality of what was once a vibrant classical market. Much the same has happened to jazz, as Clive Davis demonstrates in today’s Times.

The way to revive classical records is to restore their integrity. So far, only one major label has understood that lesson. From what I hear, another may be about to do so. Watch this space.

Meantime, here are a few more horrors that readers have asked to be drummed out of the classical charts:

21 Sarah Brightman (#18 on Billboard classical charts) 

22 Richard Clayderman

23 The Priests

24 Mike Patten/Mondo Cane

25 Josh Groban.

Prior lists are here and here.

Given that it’s illegal to sell a polyester shirt as silk, I struggle to understand why so many record companies think it’s okay to push out pop trash on their classical labels. And then they have the effrontery to be amazed when those labels lose their once-loyal public.

The history of crossover is short and nasty. It began in the 1990s when the CD boom faded and most shops still had classical shelves. Fill those racks with more popular material, ran the argument, and you maintain market share and profitability.

It was short-termism at its worst, replacing symphonies with slush, but the tactic continues even now when there are few record shops left, let alone ones with classical shelves. So why do labels do it?

Well, one crossover album in a hundred still makes a mint so executives believe it’s worth playing the lottery in the hope of hitting the jackpot. The real reason, though, is a refinement of the original deception.

The adjective ‘classical’ suggests something worthwhile, uplifting, exclusive. Attach it to any musician and its boosts their prestige, gets them onto better and broader radio outlets. It can also give them an aura as public benefactor and educator. Witness the late-life resurrection of Sting and Elvis Costello. 

The downside is that it drains the vitality of what was once a vibrant classical market. Much the same has happened to jazz, as Clive Davis demonstrates in today’s Times.

The way to revive classical records is to restore their integrity. So far, only one major label has understood that lesson. From what I hear, another may be about to do so. Watch this space.

Meantime, here are a few more horrors that readers have asked to be drummed out of the classical charts:

21 Sarah Brightman (#18 on Billboard classical charts) 

22 Richard Clayderman

23 The Priests

24 Mike Patten/Mondo Cane

25 Josh Groban.

Prior lists are here and here.

Walking down the South Bank last night to the funeral of arts broadcasting on British commercial television, I tripped over a red carpet and asked WTF it was there for.

National Movie Awards, apparently. This is where people who go to multiplexes get to nominate their favourite heart-throbs and win a chance of attending the ceremony. As I am digesting this information, a limo draws up and Tom Cruise comes walking towards me. Some women start screaming and a clutch of bald men rush towards him with photographs to be signed, and posted on e-bay within hours. 

Tom, who probably wanted a part in my new film, gave a shrug and did his stuff. He’s a pro. I waved, and walked on to the National Film Theatre where Lord Bragg, Melvyn of the Glens, was presenting the last edtition of his South Bank Show, axed after 33 years and 736 episodes by the visigoths of ITV.

It was a sentimental occasion, the final show consisting of chats with two of Melvyn’s directors, Ken Russell and Tony Palmer, and a short disquisition on his own interviewing technique. Melvyn refused to be maudlin but, as I left the party, someone muttered in my ear, ‘you’re looking at a room full of talented people who will never work again.’

Which is dangerously close to the truth. Arts documentaries are almost dead in the UK. BBC4 has picked up the baton for niche audiences but the mass audience has eluded the BBC which persists with a yoof-oriented Culture Show of no discernable quality and the noisy self-puffery of Alan Yentob’s fawning and visibly compromised Imagine strand (its last edition was a tie-in with a reissued Rolling Stones allbum).

Melvyn could be fawning, too, but he was always informative. As a young man, I would rush home Sunday nights to catch the South Bank Show at 10, avid to learn about artists. It wasn’t always great, as Melvyn readily admitted, but its heart was in the right place. One week it did Harold Pinter, the next Paul McCartney, Tracey Emin or Iggy Pop. I had completely forgotten the early collector’s edition interview with Ingmar Bergman, recalled in Melvyn’s new book of the series, called Final Cut. 

The difference between Melvyn and his imitators was always the vocabulary. The South Bank Show was always well scripted, easy on the ear, Melvyn singing its shapely cadences with an agreeable lilt. The Imagine films, by comparison, are verbally incoherent, barely articulate. Yentob habitually mumbles. Melvyn knows what to do with a labial consonant.

The killing of the South Bank Show, after it was pushed over recent years to ever-later slots, was an inevitable piece of corporate vandalism by Peter Fincham, the ITV boss, who performed similar acts while he was in an executive chair at the BBC. A pox on him.

SBS is irreplaceable. Television will never again attract audiences of 4-5 million for living art – or much else, except bloated spectator sports and soap opera. Sic transit media mundi.

Walking down the South Bank last night to the funeral of arts broadcasting on British commercial television, I tripped over a red carpet and asked WTF it was there for.

National Movie Awards, apparently. This is where people who go to multiplexes get to nominate their favourite heart-throbs and win a chance of attending the ceremony. As I am digesting this information, a limo draws up and Tom Cruise comes walking towards me. Some women start screaming and a clutch of bald men rush towards him with photographs to be signed, and posted on e-bay within hours. 

Tom, who probably wanted a part in my new film, gave a shrug and did his stuff. He’s a pro. I waved, and walked on to the National Film Theatre where Lord Bragg, Melvyn of the Glens, was presenting the last edtition of his South Bank Show, axed after 33 years and 736 episodes by the visigoths of ITV.

It was a sentimental occasion, the final show consisting of chats with two of Melvyn’s directors, Ken Russell and Tony Palmer, and a short disquisition on his own interviewing technique. Melvyn refused to be maudlin but, as I left the party, someone muttered in my ear, ‘you’re looking at a room full of talented people who will never work again.’

Which is dangerously close to the truth. Arts documentaries are almost dead in the UK. BBC4 has picked up the baton for niche audiences but the mass audience has eluded the BBC which persists with a yoof-oriented Culture Show of no discernable quality and the noisy self-puffery of Alan Yentob’s fawning and visibly compromised Imagine strand (its last edition was a tie-in with a reissued Rolling Stones allbum).

Melvyn could be fawning, too, but he was always informative. As a young man, I would rush home Sunday nights to catch the South Bank Show at 10, avid to learn about artists. It wasn’t always great, as Melvyn readily admitted, but its heart was in the right place. One week it did Harold Pinter, the next Paul McCartney, Tracey Emin or Iggy Pop. I had completely forgotten the early collector’s edition interview with Ingmar Bergman, recalled in Melvyn’s new book of the series, called Final Cut. 

The difference between Melvyn and his imitators was always the vocabulary. The South Bank Show was always well scripted, easy on the ear, Melvyn singing its shapely cadences with an agreeable lilt. The Imagine films, by comparison, are verbally incoherent, barely articulate. Yentob habitually mumbles. Melvyn knows what to do with a labial consonant.

The killing of the South Bank Show, after it was pushed over recent years to ever-later slots, was an inevitable piece of corporate vandalism by Peter Fincham, the ITV boss, who performed similar acts while he was in an executive chair at the BBC. A pox on him.

SBS is irreplaceable. Television will never again attract audiences of 4-5 million for living art – or much else, except bloated spectator sports and soap opera. Sic transit media mundi.

All day long, people have been volunteering entries for the list of musicians who should never be allowed back on a classical label. Adding to the first ten I named, here’s a second crossover sin bin from a wide range of readers:

11 Katherine Jenkins – how could I forget the ‘opera singer’ who cannot sing an opera?

12 Bocellism – as one wit refers to him.

13 Ex-advertising composer Karl Jenkins

14 Publishing dynast composer Ludovico Einaudi 

15 Somebody known as Rhydian

16 Diminutive tenor Alfie Boe

17 Amelia Ferrugia (who she?)

18 One-hit wonder Susan Boyle

19 World cellist Yo Yo Ma

and never to be forgotten

20 Electric violinist Vanessa Mae.

Keep your nominations flooding in.

All day long, people have been volunteering entries for the list of musicians who should never be allowed back on a classical label. Adding to the first ten I named, here’s a second crossover sin bin from a wide range of readers:

11 Katherine Jenkins – how could I forget the ‘opera singer’ who cannot sing an opera?

12 Bocellism – as one wit refers to him.

13 Ex-advertising composer Karl Jenkins

14 Publishing dynast composer Ludovico Einaudi 

15 Somebody known as Rhydian

16 Diminutive tenor Alfie Boe

17 Amelia Ferrugia (who she?)

18 One-hit wonder Susan Boyle

19 World cellist Yo Yo Ma

and never to be forgotten

20 Electric violinist Vanessa Mae.

Keep your nominations flooding in.

Several respondents to yesterday’s post called for a clean-up campaign of record labels that put out non-classical material under a classical banner. I share their view.

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant, I don’t want to find chicken livers in my lasagna. They may be perfectly good livers, yielded by the happiest and most willing chicks, but if the sign outside says vegetarian that’s what it ought to be – and, if it ain’t, there are laws that deal with people who pass one thing off as another. It’s no different from selling fake Rolexes. The classical industry ought to wise up to that fact while it still has a business to look after.

End of sermon. Quite a few people, led by Carole Cameron, called for a list of so-called artists we’d like to have kicked of classical labels. The estimable Carole proposed:

1 Conductor/composer Howard Goodall, a British TV classical chef

2 Faryl Smith (a singer, apparently)

3 Anything off a TV talent show….

Others added

4 André Rieu, the chart-topping schmaltz violinist

5 ex-popster Jon Lord and

6 everyone who’s taking part in a Mercedes-Benz summer fest.

Here, for your consideration, are the ten I’d most like to see kicked off.

1 Russell Watson, the amplified aria belter

2 Myleene Klass, the Satie-playing fashion model 

3 Il Divo… need I say more?

4 André Rieu, Viennese sediment for life’s departure lounge

5 Paul Potts (well he’s virtually vanished already)

6 Popstar to Opera Star winner Darius Campbell

7 Sting on Deutsche Grammphon

8 Bryn Terfel sings Lloyd Webber

9 Renee Fleming in smooch mode

10 That egregious bunch called Blake.

Let them take their fake smiles and flash their wares elsewhere. Feel free to vote for kick-offs and add your own selections in the space below.

Several respondents to yesterday’s post called for a clean-up campaign of record labels that put out non-classical material under a classical banner. I share their view.

When I go to a vegetarian restaurant, I don’t want to find chicken livers in my lasagna. They may be perfectly good livers, yielded by the happiest and most willing chicks, but if the sign outside says vegetarian that’s what it ought to be – and, if it ain’t, there are laws that deal with people who pass one thing off as another. It’s no different from selling fake Rolexes. The classical industry ought to wise up to that fact while it still has a business to look after.

End of sermon. Quite a few people, led by Carole Cameron, called for a list of so-called artists we’d like to have kicked of classical labels. The estimable Carole proposed:

1 Conductor/composer Howard Goodall, a British TV classical chef

2 Faryl Smith (a singer, apparently)

3 Anything off a TV talent show….

Others added

4 André Rieu, the chart-topping schmaltz violinist

5 ex-popster Jon Lord and

6 everyone who’s taking part in a Mercedes-Benz summer fest.

Here, for your consideration, are the ten I’d most like to see kicked off.

1 Russell Watson, the amplified aria belter

2 Myleene Klass, the Satie-playing fashion model 

3 Il Divo… need I say more?

4 André Rieu, Viennese sediment for life’s departure lounge

5 Paul Potts (well he’s virtually vanished already)

6 Popstar to Opera Star winner Darius Campbell

7 Sting on Deutsche Grammphon

8 Bryn Terfel sings Lloyd Webber

9 Renee Fleming in smooch mode

10 That egregious bunch called Blake.

Let them take their fake smiles and flash their wares elsewhere. Feel free to vote for kick-offs and add your own selections in the space below.