Whether or not we need a Men's Hour, there's a huge discrepancy in quality with the excellent Woman's Hour
Men's Hour (5 Live), the weekly magazine show, is back for a second series. I'm not sure that much reflection went on after the first: it's still a very patchy and often maddening listen. It wants to be blokey; it wants to be metrosexual. It yearns to be clever; it yearns to be puerile. It presumably intends a wide appeal, but ends up with a very narrow feel to it. In this week's programme, for example, you could be forgiven for thinking that only straight men exist. "We've all done it with a lady," said Jon Holmes, as he mulled over issues surrounding scandal and injunctions, "with the possible exception of [presenter] Tim Samuels." There followed the inevitable guffaws.
It also has moments that are at best clunky, and at worst nonsensical. At the top of the show, Samuels ran through forthcoming items, leading with the big question he and guests would explore around sex scandals: "Do men actually care, or are they a legitimate concern?" This was followed by another that sounded as if it, too, had been badly translated: "Men have sex with women they're not supposed to. What if they just said so what?" Eh?
There are playful references to Woman's Hour, and that's not a good move. Noting that Manchester City took 35 years to win a trophy, Samuels quipped: "It's taken men 64 years to get their own cut-price Woman's Hour." Now, there's clearly a debate about whether we need either programme ? are men and women really not served by other radio output? ? and also whether it's right to have one, and not the other. Those issues worry me less than the discrepancy in quality between the excellent Woman's Hour, and this, especially in interviews. Just because it's aimed at young men in their 20s and 30s, doesn't preclude it from being sharp, funny, cool and harder-hitting journalistically. Like, you know, a really well written magazine.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/may/18/radio-head-mens-hour
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