House Of Saddam, BBC1
The Burning Season, BBC4HOW to explain a despot like Saddam? According to House of Saddam, you can't, as without an in-depth psychological profile to draw from, it's virtually impossible to plough into th
e mindset of a murderous tyrant. Although the writers apparently interviewed several people who knew Saddam, his motivations and private personality remain elusive.
According to this HBO co-production, he was just a power-mad thug, and that's that. Perhaps he really was as taciturnly remote as Igal Naor's looming portrayal suggests. Perhaps no-one ever really got to know him because they were frightened of dropping their guard and offering honest counsel (one thing that does come across well in this dramatisation is the unremitting terror of working for and living under Saddam – the look of barely suppressed loathing on the face of a battered Iraqi citizen as Saddam hid in her house during the first Gulf war, was undoubtedly this episode's most powerful moment).
But having such an unsympathetic enigma at the heart of the narrative makes for unsatisfying drama. I'm not suggesting the writers should've tried to make us like Saddam, of course, but I would've preferred if they'd attempted to place his actions in some kind of deeper context.
So, while there are still two more episodes of this admittedly watchable series to come, I doubt we'll gain any significant understanding of the man. And why has the fact that America helped Saddam in his war against Iran not been mentioned? Too awkward and inconvenient for a drama part-financed by US money? In the latest episode, all we saw was the US ambassador in Iraq telling Saddam that America had no interest in Middle Eastern squabbles, which he took as tacit approval of his plans to bomb Kuwait.
Imagine his annoyance, then, when UN forces subsequently attacked Iraq in retaliation. According to this, Saddam was immensely flattered that it took the might of 30 countries to defeat him, despite the fact that the country he supposedly loved was left in ruins. Driven by monstrous pride and an utter refusal to listen to reason, the HBO Saddam is a delusional fool who brought about the destruction of Iraq simply because of his inability to stand back and say, "actually, you might have a point there".
But the fact remains that the only surprises last night were the sight of Saddam in his presidential swimming trunks, and his psychotic son Uday dressed as a ridiculous 1970s super-pimp. Otherwise, it's just a competent, straightforward dramatisation of recent and familiar history.
In the Storyville documentary The Burning Season, enthusiastic entrepreneur Dorjee Sun attempted to create a carbon credit scheme whereby big businesses offset their emissions by protecting the Indonesian rain forests. Dorjee made his ambitions clear: help stop climate change and make stacks of cash.
In Indonesia, vast forests are burned down every year to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations. Not only does this do terrible damage to the environment, it has also endangered 140 species of animal. Enter dedicated orangutan-carer Lone, whose ambition was simply to save these creatures.
Placing the avaricious yet ultimately well-meaning efforts of Dorjee alongside the selflessness of Lone engendered an obvious point about the ambiguities of altruism. It also examined the troubling complexity of banning a practice which supplies income to struggling farmers. A worthy if overlong and occasionally repetitive lecture.
The full article contains 580 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
