BBC hopes Scandinavian TV import Lilyhammer, starring The Sopranos' Steven Van Zandt, will mirror success of Borgen

For viewers still reeling from the finale of BBC4's Borgen on Saturday night, it will sound like just the tonic. To many others it might sound like the oddest British television acquisition for some time.

Lilyhammer, a Norwegian comic drama starring The Sopranos' Steven Van Zandt, is the latest Scandinavian import to be bought by BBC4, currently on a high after critical acclaim and healthy audiences for a string of Danish and Swedish series.

Van Zandt, who played Silvio Dante in the US drama, stars as a New York mobster who enters the witness protection programme and starts up a new life in Lillehammer, the sleepy Norwegian town he fell in love with while watching the 1994 Olympic Games.

"Lilyhammer mixes sharp wit and American big city ways with the beauty of the Norwegian mountains and folksy nature of a small town – a perfect combination for a razor-sharp drama about cultural mores," said Richard Klein, controller of BBC4.

When the eight part series launched in Norway last month, it drew the highest ratings for a drama premiere. In the US it will be streamed by Netflix.

BBC's head of programme acquisitions, Sue Deeks, said: "Lilyhammer is fresh, funny and offbeat – it makes a highly original addition to BBC4's rich Scandinavian drama slate."

Like Borgen, a tale of power and its affect on individuals and relationships set amid Danish coalition politics, Lilyhammer will mark a move from the crime dramas such as The Killing, which have traditionally dominated subtitled European imports on BBC4 and beyond.

The Danish political drama has proved there is great appetite for quality foreign language TV beyond the crime genre – rating strongly despite lacking the whodunnit quality that ensures viewers return to a show – with audiences gripped by Sidse Babbett Knudsen's central performance as Denmark's first female prime minister.

BBC4 has also bought the second series of the show, which it will air next winter. Its next Scandinavian drama, the Danish/Swedish co-production The Bridge, will air in the spring.

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Maybe you’re a little bit interested in watching part of the Super Bowl on your Verizon phone. This should cure you of that: It’s the ad Verizon is using to push the service, which it’s selling for $3. I’m a Verizon subscriber, and the carrier just sent this directly to my iPhone, unprompted, via MMS.

You’ll have to take my word for this, but this is exactly what it looks and sounds like on my phone — there’s no drop in quality in this YouTube upload.

What’s truly bizarre is that the live NFL streaming that Verizon does provide is actually pretty good. Or at least it was, when they were offering it for free at the beginning of the season. I don’t know why they’d want to promote it with something that looked like it was made on a Commodore 64.

Also odd: Verizon has made competent, attractive ads for its NFL offering in the past. Here’s one from 2011:

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Neil Webster)

The Million Pound Drop and The Bank Job are proving a bit hit with internet audiences, but it is the data collected from online players which is making advertisers take notice

Live interactive game shows, where viewers compete with on-screen contestants, are the key to persuading the Facebook generation to watch television, according to industry experts.

British production companies are at the forefront of using new technology to create interactive shows that can compete with the myriad distractions of social networking sites, computer games and even food and drink.

Matt Millar, chief executive of Tellybug, a technology service which developed the "tap-to-clap" mobile app for Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor (allowing you to score acts by tapping the screen), told a meeting of the Westminster Media Forum last week: "We have learned people choose to watch TV, not play an online game. Think of the state they are in. Keep it simple. If people have a smartphone and a bottle of beer on the table, you are competing with the bottle of beer."

Mark Cullen, of the ETV Media Group, added that mainstream television habitually charged viewers for voting in The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and Dancing on Ice, when via Facebook it can be free. "They have to shift their habits. The real value lies in the data they collect, building a database, affinity clubs," said Cullen.

David Flynn, who created The Million Pound Drop, a 10-question, multiple-choice quiz played by couples, which has sold to 34 countries, said: "We remain, in Britain, at the forefront of technology. It is important we stay there. We lead the world in the creation of TV formats."

The Million Pound Drop, fronted by Davina McCall, kick-started the interactive phenomenon for Channel 4 in 2010 and has generated 11m plays. Now Channel 4 is bringing back its sister show, The Bank Job– a new gameshow set in a City of London vault – for an extended run from 17 February. Its trial run in early January proved a big hit with online audiences and key groups of TV viewers, including men under 40. A start panel of four contestants compete to answer questions which open safe-deposit boxes stuffed with money. The first question of the first show last month, presented by George Lamb, set the tone: "Which singer crashed his car into Snappy Snaps while high on cannabis?"

But what makes the show such a hot property is that it has notched up 5.64m online plays. Flynn, who as joint-managing director of Remarkable Television, part of Big Brother producers Endemol, is also the creative team leader behind The Bank Job, said: "What we do is take real human impulses and make them possible." He said there were clear lessons in incorporating live interactivity into programmes, which all broadcasters were trying to do, but warned: "It has got to feel natural, not an add-on."

People have always enjoyed shouting answers at the TV, but they are now armed with smartphones, laptops and tablets. "We don't always watch TV with someone, but we can play along with strangers on Facebook or with friends," said Flynn. Some 12.4% of The Million Pound Drop's 2.5 million viewers are playing along on their laptops. Others are Googling to find the correct answers.

The Bank Job was launched first as an online game rather than a TV show, last December, and it is the only way a contestant can apply for the live TV version: you have to play to unlock the application form and score as a grand master before qualifying as a potential contestant.

Immediately, about 4,000 games were played daily. When C4 announced the new series two weeks ago, that figure jumped to 8,000. Some people are playing 10 games, while up to 160,000 play online during the show.

Since contestants are asked to give their name, sex and address, C4 is also reaping important commercial information in order to target them with adverts. Chief executive David Abraham calls such data " the new oil".

Flynn said that when viewers tweeted that the first episode of The Million Pound Drop in May 2010 was too slow, they speeded it up. The Bank Job, which netted relatively modest TV audiences of around 1.2 million, will also respond to criticism by incorporating changes in the next series.

In another development impressing the advertising world, the commercial breaks in The Bank Job have added a live ticker strip across the bottom of the screen, where information about who is playing and the names of top online players are given. Until now this was regarded as an unacceptable distraction. "We took a huge risk," said Flynn.

But C4's advertising sales team found the themed advert breaks increase viewer engagement by 80%, so people are less likely to be distracted – and they cannot fast-forward live adverts.

Remarkable is now moving on to apply the game show lessons to a fresh factual format, combining live audience participation with a "really big social issue".

However, in the cut-throat world of television, Flynn can't say any more.

Murdoch's non-newsprint newspaper is looking at five to seven years to break even. Does it have that long?

A year after its (Rupert-visionary) launch, it's natural to look again at The Daily, Murdoch's non-newsprint newspaper on an iPad or Android tablet near you. How's it doing? 100,000 subscriptions at (mostly) $39.99 a year - a fifth of the original profitability target. Ad revenue kicks in: but at just $1,300 or so for a full page, you need to pile it very high. News Corp could ramp up the price, to be sure: the New York Times tablet version costs $20 a month (though you also get the full online service for that). But how much longer will it need to reach 500,000 subs if it does? "It takes a new publication an average of five to seven years to break even, and we're well ahead of that curve," a buoyant Daily publisher tells the digital press. But seven years in cyberspace is an eternity. After all, it's only eight years since Mark Zuckerberg was a nerdy student eating popcorn at Harvard … and now, perhaps $100bn later?

■ There could have been a Sun on Sunday last autumn, but somehow the continuing murk of the News of the World ruled that out. It may come this spring – all systems go – except that top solar people keep getting arrested (on evidence from News Corp governance committees) as the murk swills wider and deeper. Is there a shorter form for this stuttering project? Only SOS.

Amid plans for a $10bn share offering, the social networking giant has come under fire for its controversial 'Timeline' feature. Two Observer writers discuss the merits of logging off for good

James Silver, writer and journalist I could blame it on the launch of Timeline (Facebook's now mandatory reboot of users' profile pages) or the forthcoming mega-IPO. Or even claim I was taking some high-minded stance (a social suffragette perhaps?) on how social media gnaws away at our privacy/sense of self-worth/ability to enjoy simple pleasures such as reading a book.

But in the end it was the soul-crushing ennui that led me to deactiviate my Facebook account last week. The sheer bloody listlessness logging on to the site produced in me in those final, dreary visits. "Steve listened to 'Death of an Interior Decorator' by Death Cab for Cutie on Spotify for Facebook." "Bob and Sophia commented on Mark's photo album University of Loughborough Reunion 04." Not forgetting that other classic: "Nigel likes Cordelia's post Me and My Cat Archie Eat a Tuna Flan."

It's not that I dislike social media. I know at their best these platforms can help spark the overthrow of despots, raise cash for medical research and share brilliant links. I'm a big fan of Twitter, which has become a primary news source for me. LinkdIn is a bit of an odd duck, but I can see what it's for. But Facebook? It's just white noise. A time sink. If you want to tell your life story, as the Timeline tagline has it, then go and write your autobiography. No one would read it. But that's kind of my point.

Elizabeth Day, Observer writer and author For me, the key to social media is that it's, well, social. What I value most about Facebook is the ability to keep in touch with friends, wherever in the world they find themselves. Although James is bored by the endless videos of cats eating tuna flan, I actively like being able to see the latest photo of my goddaughter in Hong Kong or having an instant messenging chat about the best way to eat panettone with my friend in Milan (thinly sliced, with a cup of tea is his take).

Perhaps it's because I have a strange form of phone-phobia. I hate the faux cheerfulness I have to assume when I call someone; the awkward pauses; the way you can never hang up until you've put the next social rendezvous firmly in the diary; the anxiety that you might be boring them. The thought of Skyping, where you can actually see someone's face, is enough to bring me out in a rash. I prefer communicating through Facebook – I like the jokes, the bonhomie and the sense that you're part of something (especially because, as a writer, I often work from home). And if the whole tuna-flan-feline thing gets too much, the true joy of Facebook is, of course, that you can always log out.

JS Is Facebook really the best platform with which to browse photos of your goddaughter or discuss how to eat Italian fruit bread, Elizabeth? Photo and video messaging on your phone would do just as well for the first (or one of the picture sharing sites) and if you could summon up the nerve to use Skype for video calls, you could even watch each other eat a whole variety of southern European cakes. In real time. Hell, you could even live tweet it.

I take your point that you can always log off, but what about your privacy when you're logged on? Unless you have a PhD in machine learning, you are unlikely to be able to operate Facebook's privacy settings, which means a disgruntled ex is just a couple of clicks away from checking out his former girlfriend's new man, and people who are "friends" – but only in a Facebook sense (ie they met once on holiday in Magaluf in 1997) – have an access-all-areas pass to each other's Facebook back-story.

But my problem with Facebook is not so much utility as ubiquity. From the IPO filed on Wednesday, we know the platform had 845 million monthly users, and 443 million daily, by the end of 2011. The next target is one billion. In fact, from its filing statement we learn that Mark Zuckerberg has plans for global domination: "There are more than two billion global internet users… we aim to connect with them all." (Don't you love that insidious word, "connect"?)

When will they be satisfied? When there are only six people in Africa who haven't connected with Facebook? When they've hardwired the Facebook "like" button into toddlers' teeth?

ED I know it's tempting to view Zuckerberg as an evil genius (especially after he wore pyjamas to a board meeting in The Social Network), but I don't personally feel his goal to "connect" people is all that sinister.

Of course, if you choose to leave your Facebook privacy settings wide open, if you choose to befriend someone you only met once on holiday to Magaluf, and if you then compound the error by posting (or failing to detag) a photograph of yourself in a compromised state with a vodka luge, then there might be certain drawbacks.

But I don't understand why everyone has got in such a tizz about the Timeline. It only organises the data that is already on your profile. If you want something to remain private then – here's a handy little tip – don't put it on the internet. On Facebook – unlike Twitter, which allows anyone to follow you – I am friends only with people I know and like. I have customised my privacy settings (truly not that difficult) so only certain of them can view my posts. Because of this, I find it a brilliant way of sharing photos, keeping in touch with lots of people in a time-effective way and using status updates for shameless self-promotion when I have a book out (Scissors Paper Stone, out now in paperback if you want to buy a copy, James).

JS Actually, I don't buy into the "Zuckerberg equals evil, cat-caressing genius" theory. I'm merely arguing that Facebook's plans smack of hubris. Yes, Google, Microsoft and Apple have flourished, but the evidence suggests that social networks come and go, as fashions change. Between 2005 and 2007, MySpace was the dominant player. Bebo, too, showed early promise. Friends Reunited once had 15 million users.

Facebook faces many bumps in the road, not least competition and regulatory issues, particularly over privacy. To those I would add the likelihood of new rivals appearing, seemingly from nowhere. Just a couple of years ago, few of us had heard of (games developer) Zynga or (deals site) Groupon – both titans now. As everything goes social, we can expect new, niche networking sites to emerge.

Leaving Facebook is a bit like quitting a cult: you can leave, but you're never truly free. Yes, my account is deactivated, but my details, friends, "likes" and even those dreaded status updates are merely mothballed in some underground server farm, waiting for that moment of weakness, where I log on once more… For now my resolve is strong. But you never know when the urge to "like" pictures of household pets eating savoury snacks may strike once again.

ED I'm sure all of this is true (not least the likelihood of James logging back on for those cat videos) but the fact that Facebook might face future challenges doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the site as a user at the moment. I'm on Twitter as well but for different reasons – as you say, it's a great way of getting the latest news developments. But Facebook performs a different role. It is more sociable – there is less pressure for constant 140-character updates and less competition over the number of followers/friends you have. Interestingly, whenever I speak to teenagers, they generally tell me they use Facebook but don't see the point of Twitter, which suggests Zuckerberg and his henchmen will be around for a while yet. So James, if you are ever lured back to the light-blue land of "likes" and Scrabulous, I'll be the first to request a friendship add.

The judiciary seems to have a skewed view of what the public has a right to know

As soon as a British politician imitates a Bible-belt Republican and puts pictures of his adoring wife and chubby-cheeked children on his election literature, you can guess what will dominate the next "news cycle". The press will reveal that while the leaflets were at the printers he took a campaign worker behind the filing cabinet, buried his head in her hair and whispered words to the effect of: "My wife doesn't understand me." If he lacked the smallest trace of imagination, he will actually have said: "My wife does not understand me." Meanwhile, unless the wife possessed a capacity to forgive rarely found in the human species she would not take news of the affair well.

The literature Chris Huhne distributed to the voters in the 2010 general election showed a picture of Huhne and his wife, Vicky Pryce, as newlyweds. "Getting married does not seem like 26 years ago," he wrote underneath. Another faded snap saw the young couple holding a baby. "Families matter so much to me," said Huhne. "Where would we be without them?"

Chris Huhne was not so much tempting fate as lying flat on the floor and inviting it to trample all over him.

Sure enough, the tabloids reported that while he was telling his constituents of his devotion to hearth and home, he was also tending to the needs of one Carina Trimingham, his campaign press officer. Huhne responded to the exposure by dumping his wife of 27 years. "The quality of mercy," did not as Shakespeare had it, "droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven" in this instance. Or if it did, it missed his wife. The rage of Ms Pryce was Vesuvian and the vengeance she wreaked on the energy secretary's career a wonder to behold.

The outcry that followed has shown much that is dismal about British public life and a little that is good. The small comfort is that the police investigated the accusation that Huhne falsely informed the authorities that his wife had been driving a car that had allegedly been speeding so that she could take the penalty points and he could keep his licence.

The real scandal behind the phone-hacking inquiry is that the elite thought that it had to keep Rupert Murdoch sweet and not investigate criminal charges against his employees too vigorously. Although Lord Justice Leveson is yet to investigate the corruption of government, at least police and prosecutors have learned their lesson.

If Huhne had been a private citizen, two forces and the DPP would not have spent eight months on an allegation, denied by Huhne, that caused no death, injury or damage to property. They may have broken a butterfly upon a wheel. They may have been goaded by a rightwing press, which hates Huhne because he has the integrity to say that global warming is a real phenomenon that we must tackle. But most people in the world would love to live in a country where the law treated accusations against the powerful seriously – or indeed at all.

After that, however, the reasons to be cheerful vanish. A small point that may only bother journalists is that the police obtained a court order against the Sunday Times in the autumn demanding that its political editor hand over confidential emails from Vicky Pryce.

The Sunday Times said it would defend its source and appeal. According to the DPP's statement on Friday, the case against Huhne and Pryce moved towards prosecution because the Sunday Times "consented to producing the material in question just before the appeal was due to be heard, on 20 January".

The maxim that journalists must never reveal their sources is about the only moral principle we have. At its noblest, it recognises debts of honour. Informants give you information in the public interest and say that their career, liberty or life depend on keeping their name confidential. You promise to protect them and must keep your word. More prosaically, journalists reason that if we reveal sources, other sources will not take the risk of speaking to us in the future. The Sunday Times said it told its source it would protect the source's identity unless a court ordered it to hand over any material. Perhaps its lawyers said that the struggle was hopeless, but the fact remains that once journalists went to jail rather than make their sources public. Now they won't even go to the Court of Appeal.

Meanwhile, in another court, the bisexual Carina Trimingham began privacy proceedings against the Daily Mail. She claimed that it had published "inherently private" information and described her as a "comedy lesbian from central casting". We await the judge's ruling. But the willingness of the judges to consider her case, even after they provoked the scorn of public and Parliament by allowing Fred Goodwin to claim that the affair he was having at work while he was driving his bank over a cliff was a private matter, shows how little the judiciary understands the needs of a democracy.

Free societies are raucous places. They do not always conduct themselves in the best possible taste. In the US, with its constitutional protections for freedom of speech and the press, Goodwin and Trimingham would have been unable to bring a privacy action. They were public figures involved in public controversies and would have had to argue in free debates without calling on the judges to help them.

Trimingham was Huhne's campaign press officer and mistress when his campaign literature presented him as a wholesome family man. After he moved in with her, she touted for work with lobbying firms, telling them that she could get their clients in front of senior members of the coalition.

In these circumstances, she should have had to defend her reputation before the court of public opinion, not attempt to suppress debate before a court of law.

There is an argument that we do not need American freedom because there is no public interest in sniffing Hugh Grant or Sienna Miller's dirty linen. I would accept it if we had judges who overrode privacy rights and allowed publication when there was a public interest in exposure. Unfortunately, such judges are hard to find in Britain and we have a legal system whose priorities could not be more awry if it was standing on its head.

One branch of the law makes public what should be kept secret. Another keeps secret what should be made public.

The BBC Storyville editor on his stint as a judge – and competitor – at Sundance film festival

20 JANUARY It's 10pm and after the endless flight and drive up the Rockies, it's good to finally arrive in Park City and get a whiff of night-time air. As film fests go, Sundance is, if not the biggest, certainly the best. I've attended before – to gawk at the celebrities and rich liberals as well as win the odd prize. This year, however, I'm in a somewhat anomalous position of great privilege; as editor of the BBC's Storyville, I have two films in the American competition. I am also judging films for the world documentary jury. Assailed by jet lag, I wonder how to negotiate this double role.

21 JANUARY There are lots of ways of celebrating one's birthday. This year I'm spending mine with Robert Redford - on a panel to discuss documentaries - and I am distinctly nervous. But I notice similar symptoms in the other guest - the redoubtable Sheila Nevins , head of documentaries at HBO and acknowledged queen of the genre in the US. We exchange anxieties. How will we behave in the presence of cinema royalty? Do we call him Bob, Robert or Mr Redford? We cannot decide. Stuck in ski resort traffic, he arrives late, and it is reassuring to find that near-deities are subject to the same vicissitudes as the rest of us.

Smallish, courteous, very handsome, Redford is dressed in trademark black. I have only rarely glimpsed him at his own festival. Once I sat behind him, watching him squirm with boredom rather than leave halfway through an interminable French doc. Onstage, quizzed by a glamorous CNN reporter, he has the practised talkshow manner that important Americans of a certain age possess. So, it turns out, does the formidable Sheila. She asks him what he would like to be called. He then asks me what I would like to call him, and I say Robert. He says he'd rather be called Bob. He then insists on calling me Nicky, a name I have never owned up to.

We're here to talk about whether docs change the world. I say they don't, or rarely, and probably only in ways we can't measure, though that doesn't mean that we shouldn't want them to do so. Sheila believes that docs are a form of drama. They render reality more interesting. Although Redford's Sundance Institute has sponsored wannabe world-altering work, he wonders aloud – how do things change? Afterwards, I ask Sheila what she thinks. "In the 1930s, people watched musicals," she says. "People want entertainment in bad times."

22 JANUARY My co-jurors are an African film-maker and an Asian-American curator of an arts centre. We are not allowed to talk to others about what we are watching. Communicating with film-makers is strictly forbidden. These prohibitions are difficult to observe. I am anxious about my range of facial expressions. If I wrinkle my nose, what will people think? What will happen if I fall asleep? Will I prove to be as good at disguising boredom as Bob?

24 JANUARY Mild jet lag combines with high altitude to induce wooziness. We have watched films about the Egyptian revolution, boxing in China, creators of online games and Canadian author Margaret Atwood's views on personal and public debt. I attend most of the Q and A sessions. The audiences at Sundance particularly warm to contributions from the Middle East. They love 5 Broken Cameras, a villager's account of the occupation of the West Bank shot over many years filled with neighbours and families as well as protests. In The Law in These Parts, an Israeli director interviews the judges who have meted out justice on the West Bank in the military courts set up after the occupation of 1967. The film depicts, graphically and painfully, how it is possible for the highly educated to impose a system of oppression while remaining under the illusion that what they are doing is compatible with the highest legal principles.

The Ambassador stirs controversy. Mads Brügger is a Danish journalist who goes undercover and manages to buy an ambassadorship in central Africa which then allows him to, officially, open a factory to employ locals, and unofficially to buy "blood" diamonds…

25 JANUARY We jurors are allowed to communicate with each other, and we discuss our preferences in places where our lips can't be read. Late at night, from members of the US documentary jury a common theme emerges. "America is fucked and the blame goes to white American males," according to one juror.

26 JANUARY Panic. Eugene Jarecki, director of one of the Storyville films in contest (The House I Live In), calls to express anxiety. I check out his rivals in the US doc competition. In Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (a film about the Chinese artist), his large and elegant marmalade cat is shown to be capable of leaping up and opening doors. Ai Weiwei is good at opening doors himself, and uses his stature to get away with provoking the Chinese police. This film could win .

I go to see The House I Live In again. Sitting through Jarecki's painstaking investigation into the terrible effects of America's war on drugs, I wonder how jurors will react to the suggestion, by David Simon, creator of The Wire, that American judges, penal authorities and police are involved in a "slow-motion Holocaust".

At The Queen of Versailles screening (the other Storyville entry), I agonise again. Would I choose Lauren Greenfield's often hilarious account of billionaires Jackie and David's doomed attempts to build the biggest house in the US in the midst of a slump? How would I react? Eugene is upset that there have been no reviews, and I try to calm him.

27 JANUARY Deliberation time. Sequestered in a posh hotel with the other jurors, we review the options over pinot noir. We have few disagreements, which surprises me. We loved Searching For Sugar Man, a British-Swedish film that tells the strange story of US folk singer Sixto Rodriguez, who enjoyed modest success in the 1970s and then disappeared. His music became popular among rebellious whites in South Africa but no one knew what had become of him. The Swedish film-maker found him in Detroit, demolishing abandoned houses. Here he is at Sundance, still singing, a charming survivor. We're told that the film has won the audience award, and we decide on a special jury prize for the film as well.

We want to give awards to both the Israeli film and the Palestinian one. After a short discussion, we decide to award the big prize to The Law in These Parts, which needs to be shown to as many people as possible.

28 JANUARY Awards time. Superlatives are delivered from a huge stage in a freezing barn of a local sports centre kitted out for the night. It's nerve-racking to be onstage in front of so large a crowd. I am on the edge of my seat when the American docs jury announce their winners. Lauren Greenfield gets an award for The Queen of Versailles, but the big prize goes to The House I Live In. I recall with satisfaction that in the past few years Storyville has now won two grand jury prizes and two awards for directing. Winning a prize for a doc at Sundance is as good as picking up the Oscar. (Storyville films have also picked up three Oscars, and If a Tree Falls is in the running this year.)

29 JANUARY Flying back to New York, in a private plane belonging to the Jarecki family packed with the film's editors and producers, I think about the Sundance experience. There's something special, and alarming, too, about so much privilege hooked up to the desire to alter the world. As 60s radicals used to say, we may ultimately be part of the problem rather than the solution. I'm no more convinced than I was that films are an effective means of social change. Some do alter the world, some do not. But the high of winning at Sundance lingers over the Rockies, into the American night.

Alastair Sooke's upbeat tone was perfect for a show that examined the enduring appeal of the smiley face

Smiley's People (R4) | iPlayer

Sport and the British (R4) | iPlayer

Nicky Campbell (5 Live) | iPlayer

I enjoyed Smiley's People, yesterday, very much, even though I was suffused with jealousy throughout the whole programme. Oooh, I would have loved to present that show: a half-hour examination of the enduring appeal of the smiley face, that round, yellow, simple-as-you-like icon that survives every shift in popular culture. The smiley – so ubiquitous, so blank – can mean whatever you want it to. It can be motivational (have a nice day!), underground (acid house), scary (Watchtower comics), ironic (Banksy and anyone else who's ever drawn a picture of a blank-faced, violent figure of authority with a smiley badge on its uniform).

The presenter was art critic Alastair Sooke, who was excellent, darn him. Sooke has an upbeat, nerdy style that's usually found in a science boffin rather than an art expert, and it pays dividends: he disarms his interviewees, asks the right questions, while contextualising effortlessly. And the story proved intriguing: Mr Smiley's original designer was a commercial artist, paid $45 by a life insurance company in 1963 to design a badge for employees to boost morale. It was subsequently exploited by the more capitalist-minded: two US brothers, who linked it to "have a nice day", and a Frenchman, who acquired the licence rights for Europe. Sooke didn't have much of a handle on the acid house connection, covered by an interview with superstar DJ and smiley collector Norman Cook; but he was there, stuck in, for the rest. His conclusion? The smiley revealed "the numbness at the heart of western culture". Cheer up, chief!

Radio 4 also brought us the first five episodes of Sport and the British, a 30-part series, which suggests that the British came up with everything sportif. Presented by Clare Balding, the opener was, of course, about the Olympics (we invented the modern form, apparently), followed by a programme about cricket (yep, us too), then boxing, betting and the sporting attitude (from our public schools). Aren't we great? The back-slapping was a teensy bit annoying, but the research was exemplary. And Balding is such an enthusiastic companion, you can't help but succumb.

I particularly loved the boxing programme. Pugilism – bare-knuckle boxing – was so popular in the late 1700s that it was banned in case the crowds turned revolutionary. So details of bouts were released right at the last minute… and still 20,000 people would turn up. We heard about a legendary fight, in 1810, between an older British fighter, Tom Cribb, and a young American, Tom Molineaux. It lasted 35 rounds and Cribb won, but only because the crowd invaded the ring, injuring Molineaux, and because the referee, at one point, allowed Cribb longer than he should have had to get up. After the Olympics programme (we stopped an American winning there, too), and the show about betting, you could conclude that the British might have invented sport, but we also invented cheating. Hooray for us.

The older I get, the more I enjoy sport ("this great triviality", Balding called it) – it's far less predictable than drama. Anyhow, this series is proving exceptionally interesting – and delivered in 15-minute bursts! Perfect. I'm looking forward to the rest.

Last Friday, with John Terry being stripped of his knighthood, Fred the Shred being done for driving offences and Chris Huhne being told that he couldn't lead the England football team and neither could his ex-wife, even if she did look nice in his strip, I did the only thing one can do in such circumstances: I turned to 5 Live. Nicky Campbell's topic was John Terry, of course, but news kept butting in. He had to interrupt one poor caller twice – first, for breaking the Huhne story; second, to let ex-cricketer Alec Stewart have his say.

Stewart, a bore with a dodgy turn of phrase ("… let's call them black individuals… "), tried to turn the tables on Nicky, asking him if he would remain presenting if he was accused of racist comments against a colleague. "I don't like it when you do that," said Nicky. "I'm the one who asks the questions!" As usual when it comes to football, there was much huffing and puffing, but everyone stuck to the same old allegiances. No doubt Clare Balding will explain why next week.

Another stab at reinvention risks bringing back the worst characteristics of previous regimes

The only advantage of being 10 years older than Lord Justice Leveson is that you can remember, first hand, why some of the things that mystify him came to pass. Bits of history, in short: the bits LJL is anxious to avoid as he strives to visualise an enduring framework for press regulation that might even bear his name. Why, he keeps inquiring, did sundry royal commissions and full-dress reviews, as staged since the war, yield so little lasting benefit? Why did recurring "disasters" blow them away?

Difficult questions with easy answers. Because history is littered with political attempts to muzzle the press. (It's a natural tension, manifest around the globe.) Because six years of war and censorship appealed to governments in search of a quieter life. Because our ruling classes didn't – in 1947 royal commission terms – relish "the large and expanding public for sensational newspapers" like the Daily Mirror. Because Profumo shook the establishment. Because Labour, in office, feared a Tory press.

None of this is difficult to understand. Nor, point by point, is it difficult to understand why the old Press Council failed and a new Press Complaints Commission took over. The Press Council – resisting royal commission calls for its "independent chairman" to be appointed by the lord chief justice, if you please – nevertheless persuaded a string of judges and distinguished lawyers to take the helm: Devlin, Pearce, Shawcross, Neill, Cowen, Blom-Cooper. They came and they went. And so the habits of legal life – the delays, the documents, the painstaking detail – took hold.

Third-party complaints? Bob Borzello, a perpetually outraged ordinary reader, made a hobby of them, swamping the commission with hundreds of cases. Personal hearings? In trooped the lawyers, bringing expense and more delay. Setting standards for the industry and, simultaneously, defending its freedoms? Try to ride those horses and you fell at the first fence.

The PCC, chaired by one former royal commission leader, sought to address every past frailty. It took Sir David Calcutt's suggested title of a "complaints commission", because that was the cry and the dominant complaint of the day. It ruled out most third-party interventions for obvious Borzello reasons. It declined to appoint any lawyers to the commission or to listen to specialist solicitors demanding a hearing (and fees). It didn't argue about freedom. It aimed to provide swift conciliation and swift verdicts. It wanted editors on board because their presence would influence newsroom behaviour. It asked that, at arm's length, the industry write its own code of conduct and abide by it.

And now, as Leveson scratches his head, the wheel of misfortune turns again. Third parties and the spectre of Carter-Ruck rise from the mists. Standards are more important than complaints. Freedom isn't mentioned. Editors are airily swept from commission participation in favour of "independents", who may write the code in future. Fines (and therefore m'learned friends) are back in town. Solutions depend on ripping up the solutions you thought of last time around and doing precisely the opposite.

There are three reasons to wonder how bright this is. One is to look back at the birth of the Press Council and to conclude, in the words of Professor Richard Shannon of the LSE, that, fatally, "it was flawed because it was grudged". (And note this time how so much really began when David Cameron chose the wrong press secretary). Another is to worry where the "independent" members of any replacement body can come from. We've tried retired judges, civil servants, politicians: and that just about exhausts the "lay" choice. Even believing in a free press – ie in the job you're doing – seems a bit of stretch for Leveson.

Which is where a third problem starts to nag away. The difficulty, it's now fashionable to parrot, is that the PCC was never "a regulator" – just as nearly every parallel organisation you can cite around the free world isn't a regulator, but a complaints body. Should what comes next be a statutory or notionally independent outfit, bound by law or by contract? Lord Hunt, the new PCC chair and a shrewd old commercial lawyer, is going the contract route – and perhaps that will finally win the day. But it is still "regulation" in a world that generally abhors such treatment for the press. Watch America choke on its First Amendment.

Whatever eventual regulation arises from the debris of dozens of criminal cases brought under existing criminal law has to be better for those journalists who want to pursue the truth than the simple protection of article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The public, remember, has a "right" to be informed. Regulation that gets in the way of that right – by, for instance, preventing police sources blowing the whistle on corruption in the ranks – isn't the answer to current damnation, merely a pointless slither down the slope of subservience.

Nor are more imperatives to shoot from the hip over standards an easy recourse. Remember how Lord McGregor, the first PCC chairman, intervened to denounce those who "dabbled in the souls" of Princess Di and Prince Charles – only for us to discover that Diana was orchestrating the dabbling herself.

That's the way any regulation, statutory or not, makes a fool of itself and subsides amid derision. History doesn't provide a resounding lesson for Lord Justice Leveson to carve in stone; it merely underlines the absence of permanence in a deeply impermanent world.

Sly Bailey is under fire for being paid nearly £1.7m while Trinity Mirror languishes. Ashley Highfield thinks he can transform Johnston Press's stock price. In three years' time, who will have done better?

Consider our two biggest UK-owned newspaper chains: Trinity Mirror, with five national and 160 regional titles, and Johnston Press, with 18 regional dailies and 245 other papers. The chief executive at Trinity Mirror, Sly Bailey, was paid nearly £1.7m last year (with more than £600,000 of that as a bonus). This year the analyst and investor hounds are snapping at her heels. Trinity's share price and value have collapsed during her nine years on top – down to a tenth of their former glories.

Isn't any pay packet that comes close to a million a bit of a hoot while the Mirror bangs on about bonuses? Why pay Bailey more than the next BBC director general, or many multiples of the PM? Wouldn't hacking back there save dozens of the 75 editorial jobs that Trinity axed last week? Cue inside jokes such as "Honey, I shrank the group, but not my bonus".

So the arguments for squeezing Sly – and indeed any boss of a news organisation that serves the public in difficult times – are vociferous now. But others, in fairness, say she's done well at managing costs in decline. Headline figures don't tell the whole story, they say. Which is where the new chief of the Johnston Press steps in. Ashley Highfield was head of BBC Online and a digital star from Microsoft. You would expect some giant leaps into the future. But Highfield seems to be looking hard before he leaps – and prudently tells the new issue of InPublishing magazine only two things worth remembering.

One is that "every newspaper in our group has a healthy margin over 20% and all up the business is very profitable". (It had nearly £400m in revenue and underlying profits of more than £70m last year: if only there weren't £357m of debt.) The second thing is that, in just three years, "I would expect to have confounded those who said this was a sunset industry – transforming our share price along the way."

Johnston shares are 6p a time as I write. Trinity stands at 47p. Bailey wants to keep her millions. Highfield's predecessor took home more than a million last year, and Highfield will surely aspire to do better. It sounds (as Harry Hill might say) like a fight. Give them both 36 months to turn things around. The winner gets six figures. The loser goes off into the sunset.

In a week where crime and social dysfunction filled our screens, a close study of social workers provided a much-needed glimmer of light

Coppers (C4) | 4oD

Bouncers (C4) | 4oD

Party Paramedics (C4) | 4oD

My Child the Rioter (BBC2) | iPlayer

Protecting Our Children (BBC2) | iPlayer

God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (BBC2) | iPlayer

Perhaps it's the dispiriting effects of midwinter and the economic gloom, but there does seem to be a lot of television at the moment devoted to crime and social dysfunction. Especially on Channel 4. Since offloading the burden of Big Brother, the broadcaster has taken on the onerous task of showing us that side of British life – punching, vomiting, urinating and flashing – that was once the preserve of Police Camera Action!.

Last week it was possible to watch drunk and abusive people in Tayside in Coppers and drunk and abusive people in Newport in Bouncers. There was not much to choose between them. They were all pink-faced, tattooed, bloated and violent – and, to resort to the old joke, that really was just the women.

With due respect to the Scots offender who relieved himself in the back of a police van, it was the Welsh who edged this unofficial UK gross-out competition. A Newport doorman recalled the time he had kicked his way into a male lavatory to find a woman in mid-bowel movement simultaneously performing a sex act on her boyfriend or, at least, the man she happened to be sharing the cubicle with.

I'm not sure that I needed to hear that anecdote. Still, I feel critically obliged to share it, not because that's what passes for entertainment in the pubs and clubs of Great Britain, but because that's what passes for entertainment on British TV.

"Drunk Camera Action!" has become the rallying cry of countless observational documentaries, all put together with the same dramatic division between the forces of chaos and order, the same half-ironic narration, and the same gloating appetite for corporeal excess.

Coppers is the best of the bunch, because it's the least exploitative and the most informative. But it's undermined by the ubiquity of its techniques. The almost identical approach was adopted by yet another Channel 4 offering, Party Paramedics, which, for variation's sake, showed us drunk and abusive people in Kavos.

Never heard of Kavos? It's a hangout in Corfu for British youngsters who want to screw each other, and, as such, should not be confused with Davos, the global gathering in Switzerland for oldsters who have screwed us all.

This time the head-shaking guardians of society were not Scottish cops or Welsh bouncers but Greek physicians manning a clinic in the middle of Kavos's nightclub strip, like some outpost of civilisation in the darkest heart of debauchery. Say what you like about the Greeks' inability to control their spending (and who are we to speak?), but at least they can control their drinking.

"I wanna get wankered," spluttered one Englishman, already making a good fist of the job. Others professed a more traditional desire to get "paralytic every night".

Good on us, it might be said, for bringing Greek tourism and medicine such lucrative business in their hour of need. But, really, what is it with Britons? Why are we on such intimate terms with alcoholic oblivion? And whatever happened to embarrassment?

Drunkenness may be as old as history, but its brazen parade for the camera is a much more recent phenomenon. It's also one that Channel 4 appears dedicated not just to enabling but celebrating.

My Child the Rioter was a superior but no more inspiring film. Several young people were interviewed, alongside their parents or parent, about why they took part in last summer's riots. The reasons given were, with one exception, for fun, for free goods or because everyone else was doing it.

Those who insist on seeing the flame of political rebellion in England's burning cities last year had their work cut out casting these dim-witted kids and their docile parents as the revolutionary vanguard. But Liam, the father of a student rioter called Ryan, was on hand to rouse disappointed sofa insurgents. "Robbing trainers isn't political," he explained. "The reasons for robbing trainers are political."

His son, of whose actions he firmly approved, said that he "wanted to see policeman being attacked, being injured". Ryan could have stayed in and watched Coppers, but then he wouldn't have witnessed what he characterised as "a redistribution of wealth" and an attack on "government institutions".

Liam also cited another motivation for the masses laying siege to Foot Locker – the £20,000 it costs to "get educated". You could see his point. His son was studying culture, power and identity at Salford University. He certainly has a strong case for a refund.

The best documentary of the week was Protecting Our Children, a close study of the much maligned duties of social workers. The film followed a trainee social worker, Susanne, as she advised and evaluated a couple – Mike and Tiffany – with a three-year-old son, Toby, who couldn't speak, was still wearing a nappy and had suspicious bruising on his body.

Mike was an aggressively defensive type who couldn't see the need for his son to have a toothbrush as he himself never brushed his teeth as a child. All you need to know about Mike's parenting skills and ability to make rational decisions is that he only had one front tooth remaining.

The family's flat was covered in dog faeces and Toby didn't have a mattress to sleep on. "Would you leave a dog there?" one senior social worker asked after a visit. "So why would you leave a child there?"

But removing a child from parental care is a complex moral and legal process. When to intervene? Can the parents be helped? Is the state too invasive? What complicates the issue further is that, to have a good chance of being able to recover from the effects of neglect and abuse, a child needs to be placed for adoption as young as possible.

Navigating this impossible path is an embattled group of professionals who know that with one false move they might be starring in a tabloid vilification campaign. There are plenty of strapping men who wouldn't relish going up against the likes of Mike when, in his own words, he's "irated". Susanne kept her cool and was impressive throughout, although she could possibly have done without the face jewellery. Some parents might not appreciate being judged by someone with a ring in her lip and stud in her cheek.

Tiffany became pregnant and gave birth prematurely. Mike hit her, she said, and they split up. Then she decided to put both children up for adoption. In the circumstances, it was a happy end. Or what passes for it in social work.

According to God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, all the most unappealing behaviours discussed above, including the scatalogical indiscretions, were for 35 years part and parcel of the former Black Sabbath singer's life. He was a mindless rebel, alcoholic, drug addict, wife abuser, neglectful parent and all-round obnoxious idiot. And a hero to millions.

Perhaps sensing that his drunken pranks, such as biting the heads off doves and smearing his excrement on hotel walls, had become the stuff of teenage holidays, Osbourne gave up booze several years ago. If only sobriety could do for his voice what it's done for his liver. To hear him caterwauling during a sound check was to wonder at the meaning of his claim that he suffered from "terminal perfectionism". Had the perfectionism reached its end?

Much of the documentary was spent recalling his wild years when he looked like Gazza in a fright wig and platform heels, a riot of mad mugging and destructive compulsions. Osbourne earned his reputation. He put the hours in drinking vodka and snorting coke. He never shirked responsibility when it came to being irresponsible. And, let it be said, he's not without a certain inarticulate Brummy charm.

But the whole genre of rock reminiscences is inescapably self-parodic. Not for the first time, as the battle stories of vomit-choking, guitar solos and tour deaths were retold, the ghost of Spinal Tap hovered mockingly over the proceedings. What's sometimes forgotten is that the joke in that masterpiece wasn't just on heavy-rock musicians but the very idea of rockumentaries.

If this film largely endorsed the Ozzy myth, it also left the impression that the only truly remarkable thing about Sharon Osbourne's husband is that he's not dead. So let that be a warning to the truculent hordes in Newport and Kavos. Carry on acting like you are and in 35 years, when you're a multimillionaire, you might have to stop. That should give them pause for thought.

Whether or not the social network achieves a $100bn valuation, a glance at the flotation prospectus should convince right-thinking investors to steer clear

Can Facebook really be worth $100bn? Mark Zuckerberg hasn't yet put a price tag on his creation, so it's still premature to say he'll attempt to achieve that big fat round number when the flotation happens. But read last week's prospectus and put yourself in the position of a long-term investor. Would you really pay 100 times profits of $1bn, and 27 times last year's revenues of $3.7bn, for a seven-year-old business – even one with 845 million users?

If you are tempted to do so, there are probably three reasons why you should lie down until the feeling goes away.

1. Zuckerberg's first-person letter to potential investors – a now-obligatory inclusion in a prospectus out of Silicon Valley – was a strange dispatch. Here's the ambition: "Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries."

OK, but the reason advertisers might use Facebook is to flog stuff. What if Zuckerberg's "social mission" collides with the commercial mission being pursued by the advertisers, who provide the revenues? Nobody really knows. But WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell's analysis that "you interrupt social conversations with commercial messages at your peril" sounds correct. Looking at your mate's photos on Facebook will be less fun if the system is badgering you to give a thumbs-up for a new washing powder.

"As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use," continues Zuckerberg. "This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives." What he is describing there is word-of-mouth endorsement, which is indeed a highly prized form of advertising. But word-of-mouth recommendations are valued because money doesn't change hands – surely a problem for a profit-seeking business.

2. Facebook has no need to float. It doesn't require money to invest. It is profitable and generates enough cash to pursue its current ambitions. In a 200-page document, the section titled "Use of proceeds" runs to four paragraphs. That's because there's little to say. A portion of new capital (expected to be $5bn) will go on paying taxes that arise from the flotation itself; the rest will go on deposit.

The main reason for floating is to allow longstanding investors to cash in a portion of their winnings. Fair enough, but, in a rational world, those investors would have to accept a hefty discount to reflect the fact that Facebook is an immature business whose earnings potential can only be guessed at. For example: Facebook hasn't yet cracked how to present adverts on mobile devices, and saturation point may be approaching in countries such as the US, where the growth in monthly active users slowed to 16% last year.

The float's promoters will seek to emphasise the potential for profitable growth and play down the risks – that's their job. But, come on: valuing a company at 100 times earnings assumes years of 50%-plus profits growth. Very few companies in history have achieved that. Uncertainty ought to imply caution in pricing a business; at $100bn, there would only be optimism.

3. Zuckerberg is keeping control of Facebook by adopting a dual voting structure that, to British eyes at least, belongs to an era that has thankfully gone. Facebook's arrangement is deemed excusable because the company must avoid becoming bogged down by bureaucracy. But will investing absolute trust in Zuckerberg always be seen as sensible? Is he more interested in changing the world or in making money for his investors?

The twin goals may currently be aligned – as Zuckerberg puts it, "the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company" – but what happens if the circle becomes less easy to make square? Do outsiders get a real voice in how the company is managed?

Surely that's what you'd expect from a company that says it champions "direct empowerment" and "more accountability". What happened to empowerment of the owners of Facebook shares?

What does it take to be a top blogging fashion photographer? We get a lesson from Wayne Tippetts

We've been stalking central London for an hour, cameras slung low but ready for the quick draw, when we spot something: a flash of vivid green, across a busy Mayfair thoroughfare. Wayne Tippetts, a photographer who since 2008 has been taking pictures of any fashionable strangers he meets for his blog, Street Style Aesthetic (streetstyleaesthetic.com), cranes for a better look. "We might have something," he says, with the don't-jinx-it caution of a hunter who has learned not to trust any old rustle of leaves. "But no need to rush it."

Ignorant about clothes and about cameras, I've spent the morning being patiently schooled by Tippetts in the ways of street style photography. He's told me to avoid a magpie-ish temptation to focus on something singular and flashy, such as a hat, but to consider instead a passer-by's whole get-up; he has counselled me, above all, to "work to your own aesthetic. Have confidence in what excites your retina".

The woman we've spotted in Mayfair is wearing a green dress under an enveloping black shawl. I can't tell how the whole package rates in fashion terms, but, yeah, I think my retinas are decently excited. The green fabric makes me think pleasantly of toothpaste. The shawl has a nice Nancy from Oliver! feel. We cross the road to say hi.

Her name is Zoë, she's 32 and a doctor, just off a night shift at King's A&E. Remembering what Tippetts has told me about the approach phase (that he's occasionally been taken for a mugger; that it's best to kick off with a compliment), I mention the dress. Zoë agrees it's very green and lets us take her picture. "I don't know what to do!" she says, posing awkwardly. "Give a little more hip," Tippetts advises. "That's it. You look great."

Earlier, he'd told me: they're giving up their time, so it's your duty to "make them look fabulous. Don't shoot them next to an overfilled bin". I guide Zoë away from a pile of construction signs so that she's in front of some attractive slate steps. I'm pleased with the results.

Before Zoë, we'd stopped 21-year-old Florienne in Fitzrovia, and after we had taken some surprisingly brilliant photographs of her in a brown poncho she revealed she was a model, which made it all feel like cheating. After that, we'd found Helena (24, in a spotty skirt and a beanie); then Zoë in her green frock. Now, walking in Soho, Tippetts decides I'm ready to strike out alone. I gingerly accost a woman wearing a colourful puffer jacket.

She's Carri, 31, a fashion designer, and I ask her to pose on busy Berwick Street. The shoot's a bit rushed and I'm worried there might be a piss-streak on the wall I've stood her next to. Happily, Tippetts approves the pictures. "Who's the jacket by?" he asks and I admit I didn't find out. "The jacket's the whole piece!" It's another lesson learned: ask for label names.

To end the day, we move east to scour Hoxton. Nobody's wearing the hoped-for bowler hat and there are no full-body animal costumes, so we call it a day after taking some shots of Roxeanne, 24, wearing cool earmuffs. "Sometimes you've got to accept," shrugs Tippetts. "You can't get 'em all."

The Sacramento Bee has fired award-winning photojournalist Bryan Patrick after an examination determined that one of his section front photographs this week had been digitally altered. In the ensuing investigation editors then uncovered additional manipulated pictures by the veteran photojournalist, which led to his dismissal for ethics violations.

I have taken the controversial step of mentioning the words “hacking,” “reporting” and “ethical” all in the same sentence. Now I’ll need the rest of this post to convince you I haven’t lost all vestiges of integrity.

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