Ninth Doctor actor, Christopher Eccleston, has spoken about how many TV bosses think it’s fine to insult viewers’ intelligence.

Eccleston is playing a cult leader in upcoming thriller, Unspoken, due out on Netflix on 21st April, and he says:

“There’s a great trend in drama at the moment for antagonists who are toxic, white, apparently heterosexual, late-middle-aged men. Thankfully, Julia [Gearey, writer of Unchosen] gave him dimension and placed him in a story of tragedy involving the loss of his son and alcoholism. It’s a gift of a role because of the awkward questions it asks of our audience.

“Historically, there would be programmes that I watched when I was young where I would feel patronised – Love Thy Neighbour or whatever – but there was a lot where I felt I was being respected; the likes of Play for Today and The Naked Civil Servant. But with the erosion of the writers’ culture to almost writing by committee, I’ve heard stories about some of the idiotic – and sometimes downright hateful – assumptions about the audience’s intelligence today. A lot of people in television think the audience is stupid.”

He added:

“Masculinity is in crisis, and it seems it’s particularly white, working-class boys who are being neglected, left to rot by governments and targeted by the far Right. So as an ex-working class white boy, I try, if I can, to address some of those things. Masculinity shouldn’t be contingent on other people’s oppression.”

He does seem to have a point. But we’ll leave it to DWC readers to dissect and discuss this in the comments as it’s a pretty huge topic and we’re all going to have interesting opinions on it.

Either way, I think we can all agree that it’s always a horrible thing for TV to patronise its viewers. And good on Christopher for speaking out about this!