Channel 4 and Maitlis embarrassed by electoral malfunctions – Garry Bushell | Television and radio | Showbiz and television

In the past, journalists tasked with covering major news events prided themselves on their detachment and impartiality. Nowadays, elite TV networks see themselves as celebrity activists whose opinions and biases should prevail.

Take Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murphy whose coverage of the US presidential election on America decides (Channel 4, Wednesday) was less impartial than a Captain Hook convention.

Forget the irreverence and mockery, what we got from their eight-hour marathon one-night special was a level-headed diatribe against Trump. The only second term they wanted Donald to serve was prison time.

We've received regurgitated allegations, insults, and scandals, but none of them have called Kamala Harris' record into question. They didn't ask her if she had changed her mind on key issues; for example, in 2020, Kamala advocated decriminalizing border crossings and banning fracking. They didn't wonder if his one-time allegiance to all things woke, including defunding the police, might have deterred millions of floating voters.

The closest Maitlis came to questioning her candidacy was to ask: Did she run a strong enough campaign?

Which was hardly a match for questions like: What do you fear most from a Trump victory?

Stormy Daniels asked former Prime Minister Boris Johnson: 'Are you leaving your daughter with Donald Trump?'

Maitlis became increasingly grumpy and graceless as the night wore on, haranguing anyone she suspected of not entirely agreeing with Team Harris. When she died, Guru-Murphy had to tell the former BBC news presenter and Newsnight presenter to stop swearing after she once called and future President Trump a madman. Emily and her Martini earrings left the room.

Dundee-born actor Brian Cox captured the mood of the show perfectly when he said: We have to make sure he doesn't go crazy, he's crazy, he wants to be a dictator.

Us, Brian? Certainly US elections should be decided by American voters, not Channel 4 and their battalion of virtue-signaling luvvies.

It took former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to restore some balance by pointing out that Democrats had tried to keep Trump off the ballot. Not so democratic, then.

The constant claims, common to all television coverage, that the election was extremely close, on a knife's edge, too close to call, also proved to be hogwash.

Impartiality is difficult to achieve these days, but the much-maligned GB News has achieved it far better than C4 or the BBC, whose efforts at election night coverage have been surprisingly disappointing.

Viewers hoping for fair play and balance will also have been disappointed by ITV. At one point, host Tom Bradby called Trump a fascist. It's unbiased for you. A few hours later Hello Great Britain (ITV, Thursday) I saw Susanna Reid, at her most moralistic. He's a convicted criminal, she fumes.

I'm not the biggest fan of Piers Morgan, but it reminded viewers how much the show needed Piers as a counterbalance to all that red-faced media class indignity.

Few things on earth are smaller than the egos of great television presenters. Peter Crouch, King Kong, Ben Nevis, all these giants are dwarfed by the scale of their conceit and self-importance.

It was a bad election for pampered, multi-millionaire, Trump-bashing celebrities like J-Lo, Oprah and Cardi B. Floating voters largely ignored them and gave Trump the biggest comeback since Lazarus. Or at least since Grover Cleveland 131 years ago.

It was also a bad election for bloated British podcasters like Alastair Dodgy Dossier Campbell and Tory Wet Rory Stewart. The gap between their predictions and actual results reflects the disconnect between commentators and the general public on Brexit, and explains the strong rise of Reform UK.

Satire did not flourish either. Live comedy show now dismal in the Americas Saturday evening live (Sky Comedy, Sunday) had Kamala as a surprise guest last weekend and gave her the easiest ride this side of a kindergarten playground.

In a short sketch, Harris told her in a mirror (played by comedian Maya Rudolph): It's nice to see you Kamala, and I'm just here to remind you that you get it. Oops.

Earlier in the campaign, the CBS show 60 Minutes edited Harris' appearance to make her more succinct, that is, less brimming with word salad gibberish.

Is our own Do I have news for you (BBC1, Friday) be more impartial? What do you think? Self-proclaimed satirist Ian Hislop defended Rachel Reeves after her budget, even though bond markets reacted worse to that than to the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget.

But last night, a surprisingly cool Hislop settled for childish barbs, directed at Trump dancing, like The Village People and there's the idiot. Again, not a word about Harris. I would politely suggest that satirists should view all politicians with the same cynicism. A bit of clever and wild wit would also help.

The Day of the Jackal (Sky Atlantic, Thursday) was a welcome relief from the tumult of American politics. This is not a remake of Frederick Forsyth's novel, nor the 1973 film that followed, but rather this elegant series that draws loosely on the spirit of the book.

Eddie Redmayne is the Jackal, aka Charles Calthrop, with Lasanda Lynch as MI6 sniper Bianca Pullman who wants to lock him up.

At first we see the enigmatic assassin, a lean and mean killing machine, heavily disguised as a grimy old cleaner. He infiltrates an office and eliminates several targets before meticulously eliminating a right-wing German politician from a record distance of nearly 2.4 miles.

Someone should put these scopes on Dragons Den.

Forsyth's book was based on fact: In 1962, disgruntled French army officers plotted to kill General Charles de Gaulle after he granted Algeria independence.

This series, written by Top Boys Ronan Bennett, is entirely fictional and revolves around the Jackals' attempt to suppress a tech genius known as the UDC (no relation to the UDA) whose revolutionary foreign exchange software made powerful enemies.

The action shots and car chases are clever but, where the original was tense and focused, this ten-part tale suffers a bit from plot padding, such as Bianca's unlikely home life.

I feel the same way about The old man (Disney+). It sparkles every moment Jeff Bridges appears on screen as Dan Chase, grizzly former CIA operator. When he's not on screen and the action lingers on the story or the dreary kidnapping, I find my finger hovering on fast forward.

The Strangest Thing About TV's Latest True Crime Horror Story Until I kill you(ITV, Sunday Wednesday) was the wandering accent of Anna Maxwell-Martin as victim Delia Balmer. Even stranger, if you watched the documentary that followed, it almost matched Delia's real accent.

It was the real-life story of evil Liverpudlian John Sweeney, a carpenter turned ax murderer. Delia, a bristling and difficult-to-like nurse, was to be his third victim. Shaun Evans, the shy and sensitive young Morse in Endeavor, was almost unrecognizable as the creepy control freak.

True crime is ITV's strong suit at the moment. Technically, their series are difficult to fault. My only thought is that the modern world is already miserable enough. Isn't it time to revive the kind of imaginative action-escapist dramas that their predecessors gave us in the 1960s and 1970s?

Mrs. Peel, we've never needed you more.

Random irritations: Eight weeks of Christmas TV adverts. They have been operating since the end of October. Wake me up when it's over.