BBC comedy’s Lefty bias survives even the coldest Swedish winter
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I ’ ve been doing something extremely rare for me, during this latest lockdown – listening to a BBC Radio sitcom. They are invariably dire, groaningly unfunny. But this one came on one day while I was busy cooking and my hands were too sticky to turn the radio off, so I began to listen. And lo, it made me laugh!
It ’ s called The Cold Swedish Winter, written by one Danny Robins, and revolves around an Englishman called Geoff, who is married to a Swede called Linda. They have a young son and live in a tiny town with an unpronounceable name in northern Sweden. His in-laws make frequent appearances, and the constant culture clash between the typical Swedes and this very English chap leads to some amusing dialogue and good jokes. Funny and original jokes, on the BBC? Remarkable.
But, of course, it wasn ’ t long before Auntie ’ s predictable Lefty biases started seeping in. The throw-away lines and jibes against Tory targets – Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg and even Dominic Raab, for goodness sake – followed by the other usual suspects: Trump and Nigel Farage and (sigh) Brexit. They really worked hard at shoe-horning so many of them into the small number of episodes I listened to. Needless to say, there were no jibes at the expense of Labour politicians, for example Jeremy Corbyn, the biggest joke of all, although he is surely a wellspring for endless laughs.
Naturally the latest episodes dealt with the pandemic and here too the show got right on board with the wholly-ingrained BBC agenda – the obsession with the joys of multiculturalism and the ubiquitous evil of bigoted white people. A baddie on the show blamed Sweden ’ s Covid cases on immigrants, as they didn ’ t share the native population ’ s hygiene standards. But a Turkish character soon put him right, explaining that it was actually the other way around. Ethnic minorities were catching Covid because they worked as Uber drivers, ferrying reckless Swedish passengers to their raves and parties.
In the end, none of this was at all surprising. After all, the show simply plays to its usual gallery. So there are things you can say, and things you must ignore. And one thing you definitely must ignore is the alarming state of affairs in present-day Sweden. It has a long and proud history of gender equality and respecting the rights of women, yet it is now called the rape capital of Europe. Swedes are known for their religious tolerance, yet there has been a steep rise in anti-Semitic attacks. They are also characteristically law-abiding and civil, yet street violence and gang warfare in Swedish cities have burgeoned so shockingly that some neighbourhoods have become virtual no-go areas for the police.
The strictures of political correctness forbid either the government or the media to admit that all these problems stem from the same cause: Sweden opened its doors to migrants and asylum-seekers rather too broadly and indiscriminately and woke up to the fact that large numbers of this new population do not, in fact, share their adopted country ’ s values of democracy, pluralism and egalitarianism. They weren ’ t brought up with them, they didn ’ t learn them at school, and these principles were not enshrined in their own laws back home.
That is the real culture clash going on in modern Sweden, not the comedy version in The Cold Swedish Winter. But, of course, there aren ’ t a lot of jokes in it. Much easier to simply take another swipe at Brexit.
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