Making
Slough Happy
BBC2
November-December 2005
In November 2005, I co-presented
the four-part BBC2 series, ‘Making
Slough Happy’, repeated on the Community
Channel in January 2007.
The programme provoked a
great deal of discussion and comment on
the whole area of the ‘science of
happiness’ and its potential applications.
Reviews
The series was reviewed in
most of the papers; generally the tabloids
liked it more than the broadsheets.
‘A
cheerful but loopy series’ –
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian,
5 December 2005.
‘A wonderful, life-changing
project’ – Radio Times,
12-18 November 2005
‘There is a really important
idea in Making Slough Happy. I’m just
not sure that anyone will journey further
along the happiness path by watching it.’
– Jace Stephen, Mail on Sunday,
20 November 2005
‘What effect does shouting
through a megaphone and handing out plants
in the street have? You have been warned
– TV’s latest “social
experiment” is underway’. Chris
Riley, The Daily Telegraph, 15
November 2005
‘Some of what they preach
is blindingly obvious, but in our time-poor
society, we ignore common sense…watch
and learn’. Daniela Soave, Daily
Mail, 12 November 2005
‘One of those bonkers-sounding
ideas that turn into a programme that is…well,
bonkers’. Terry Ramsey, Evening
Standard, 15 November 2005
‘Making Slough Happy
pivots on the conviction that you can learn
to be happy. Can you?’ Joe Joseph,
The Times, 16 November 2005
‘Heading up the project
is Richard Reeves, a man so eerily, robotically
pleasant, you wouldn’t be surprised
if his face suddenly fell off, revealing
a set of circuit boards and flashing LEDs’.
Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn, The
Guardian, 12 November 2005.
Karl French in the Financial
Times gave the series – ‘an
amusing social experiment’ - four
stars out of five (15 November 2005), but
his colleague Robert Shrimsley (FT,
19-20 November 2005) took a slightly different
view:
‘One of those tiresome
shows that involves some prancing pillock
with a Unification Church smile interacting
with members of the public to prove a fatuous
point. Anyway, the prancer – in this
case a sort of philosopher-cum-public-policy-wonk
called Richard Reeves – was engaged
in trying to cheer up the denizens of the
nondescript Berkshire town….’
Links etc.
‘Happy
Talk’ is a good Observer piece
by Phil Hogan that discusses Making Slough
Happy
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