Just the Ticket

Buses...they get us from routes A-Z, we love them, we hate them, but,if you're stuck with public transport, we can't do without them. 'The Route Masters...Running London's Roads' (BBC2) looked at the Bus network in London. Similar to a to a slew of transport fly-on-the-wall documentaries, this was a nostalgic, informative and, at times, moving look at the lives of the drivers, controllers, managers and some of the passengers that try to get from Home to Work and Back Again on a daily basis. It worked as a documentary as it allowed the subjects and participants to speak for themselves; the portraits rang true instead of seeming patronising or staged. So whether it's the retired merchant banker that now drives a bus., the daughter continuing in her father's footsteps as a driver or the retirees, talking of the glory days of conductors and being able to nip of the back of the bus for some shopping, all the tales added to a warm fuzzy of a joint enterprise (not the reality though of being stuck on the top floor with a sod-casting violent yob). There wasn't really a golden age, however, as forty years ago, a huge amount of the Routemasters ran late - now, computerisation makes control of traffic flow a lot easier, but certainly not easy. These are enjoyable little social histories of Britain, and this is ethnographic television that will be looked on with the same nostalgic glow sixty years from now as we look on some 60s and 70s period pieces now. Worth waiting for.