TV is often accused of being style over substance these days, but Channel Five offered a platform for the un-telegenic tonight with a brilliantly entertaining new series, On the Yorkshire Buses. This light-hearted, observational documentary follows the daily travails of East Yorkshire Motor Services, a privately owned firm whose fleet of red and gold double decker buses ply the Scarborough seafront, urban Hull and the lanes of East Riding.
The programme is, unobtrusively, given the flavour of a film spoof. When we were immersed in a rivalry between two rival open-top bus companies, Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western music sounded in the background. When the first drama struck – an acute shortage of bus drivers on a sunny day – the Mission: Impossible music accompanied the scrambling at central office. “We’re getting in anyone we can with a licence and a pulse,” said the manager.
Driving duties on one particular rural bus service, on which local pensioners depend, fell to Rod Hebden during the crisis day. The gem of the episode, Hebden is a retired bank manager, slim and precise, with an unfathomable passion for buses. In a biopic of his life, he would be played by Steve Coogan. Although he has been nine years with the firm (for love, not money), Rod had never driven this particular rural route. “Left! Left! You’ve gone the wrong way!” crowed his anxious, white-haired passengers as they crept down unsigned lanes.
Back at the office, Rod’s manager mused: “He’s a real bus-spotter. But we’ve only ever had one complaint about him: when he stopped his own bus and got off so he could photograph another bus coming the other way.”
This first instalment demonstrated a nice idea, beautifully executed. However, would one tune in for seven more hours of it? Like a trip on the Scarborough seafront open-top bus, once might be enough.