Why doesn't Will Smith just come out with it and admit he's really the Messiah? He's too shrewd to say it out loud, of course, but he's been hinting at it for some time in his movies. In his latest, Seven Pounds, he stops just short of pulling out a crown of thorns and humming I Am The Resurrection, but the entire movie is one gigantic nudge towards Smith's increasingly Jesus-like quality. He plays an enigmatic but undeniably very earnest fellow - ostensibly working for the IRS - who seeks out seven strangers who have fallen upon desperately hard times. Upon them, he selflessly bestows a reward that will put their lives back on the right track, at great sacrifice to himself. Who is this modern-day martyr? Why is he doing this? The mystery doesn't actually have a mystical solution, just a calculatedly poignant one, but still, the passion of the Smith is in no doubt.
Looking back, he's been doing this for some time. In recent times he's been drawn to roles that squarely distinguish him as The Special One, but show us he's suffering with it too. In Hancock he was the only superhero on Earth (well, just about) and it made him lonely, miserable and alcoholic. In I Am Legend he was the only surviving person on the planet (well, just about) and again, lonely with his special status. We had to feel his pain; there was nobody else's pain to feel. In The Pursuit Of Happyness, directed by Seven Pounds' Gabriele Muccino, he was the salt of the earth, the common man, suffering the hard knocks of life on the bottom rung of the ladder - but not just any common man. Oh no, Smith's common man pulls himself up by his bootstraps, 'cos he's actually special.
Even his detractors would have to admit, Smith is irritatingly good at everything: acting, singing, dancing, even rapping. He's a solid, $100m-a-picture proposition. He can do comedy, romance, action, serious drama. He's a great dad, husband, friend; he's probably brilliant at grouting.
In the early "Slick Willy" stages of Smith's career, he went out of his way to impress his talents upon everyone on the planet. It was all about "look at me. I'm the greatest!" (Oh yes, let's not forget he played Muhammad Ali). But this new, mature Smith seems to be more saying, "I have transcended your earthly concerns. I exist on a solitary higher plane, just one step below God, and maybe Gandhi." It wouldn't surprise me if he announced he was retiring from acting and taking a post as Barack Obama's chief advisor on hydrogen power, or going off to start a new religion, or something. It's all getting rather tiresome. Come on, Will! What happened to just getting jiggy with it?
If Smith really is that lonely at the top, perhaps it's time he was taken down a rung. He could always emulate his Seven Pounds character for real, and give up all his wealth to support his needy compatriots, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps he could just refresh his box-office appeal by returning to the real source of his power: Bring on Bad Boys III!
The father-son tale, in which Smith stars with his own son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, beat off competition from Tolkien-lite fantasy Eragon and an adaptation of the much loved children's classic Charlotte's Web for the top spot.
Eragon, a special effects-laden tale of dragons and elves aimed at those with withdrawal symptoms for the Christmas openings of Peter Jackson's films, opened in second place with $23.45m. Charlotte's Web, however, managed only a disappointing $12m for third place, despite featuring the vocal talents of Julia Roberts, Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey to animate the beloved children's tale of a pig, Wilbur, who takes advice from a spider on how to avoid the dinner table.
The top five was rounded out by two previously released movies, the animated adventure Happy Feet, about an outcast penguin, and romantic comedy The Holiday, both taking just over $8m. It was a poor weekend for Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's Mayan language tale, which fell from first to sixth place, taking $7.7m in its second week.
Analysts said Smith's success proved that the actor remains a powerful force at the box office, no matter what genre of film he appears in. Happyness, the story of a struggling dad who becomes homeless along with his young son, followed the likes of Independence Day and I, Robot to No 1. "Audiences around the world love him," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at Sony, which produced Smith hits Men in Black and Hitch. "Everyone who sees Will Smith or meets Will Smith feels like he could be their best friend," Bruer said. "He has that type of charisma that resonates throughout whatever room he's in."
It seems that Hollywood has failed to produce an obvious festive blockbuster this year. Overall box office was down 8% on the same weekend in 2005, when King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were in first and second place.
When you turn on the television, do you want to see a mirror, a window, or a vision of how life should be? Wait a second, that sounds like a teaser for Changing Rooms. What I mean is, what do we expect from TV, and are our expectations too contradictory?
The question arises from a few lines written by the veteran broadcaster, Ludovic Kennedy, at the end of a book review about the BBC in the Oldie magazine. Apropos of not very much, Ludo suddenly makes the - some would say ludicrous - observation that there are too many black faces on the Beeb.
"I am all in favour of black advancement," he states, "but there's now hardly a TV, pub, police station, soap, vox pop or ad without rather more than its fair share of black participation."
Leaving aside the obvious problem with that sentence (what does he mean "hardly a TV"?), the gist of it is that black people - by which he means non-white people - are over-represented on screen. Kennedy quotes the Office of National Statistics figure of all ethnic minority groups together making up just 7.5% of the nation's population.
Perhaps he has been meticulously counting and found that black and Asian people now make up 8% of the BBC's output. My heart shrinks at the mere contemplation of this kind of quota system.
From where I sit, in the borough of Brent, with its majority non-white population, the BBC is a long way from reflecting the racial mix of contemporary urban life. And I imagine that EastEnders does not speak directly to too many Bangladeshis living in Newham.
But then no one really wants TV, and in particular the BBC, to mirror life as it actually is. The commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ripped into "bigoted" Kennedy and the Oldie, which she dismissed as "a repository for blimpish fogeys who cannot bear to watch the irresistible and dazzling transformation of the media." I'd like to catch that programme myself, but she didn't mention which side it was on.
Kennedy would have reasonable grounds for complaint if he were to argue that there was a gross under-representation of blimpish fogeys in TV drama, indeed a conspicuous under-representation of old people in general. To this group, you could add fat people, ugly people, disabled people - none of them get much of a look-in.
Then, of course, there are the ways in which the minority groups that are represented are, as it were, represented. For example, if the aim was an accurate depiction of reality then one in six actors in prison dramas would be black, and white actors would struggle to land the part of a street mugger.
No doubt some readers will think that such a crass observation does nothing but reinforce negative racial stereotypes. Perhaps, but the point is that in other media such provocative social realism doesn't appear to be a problem. Take music, for example. The lyrics of rap and reggae are filled with violence, avarice and sexual braggadocio. Yet they are often praised by liberal critics, as well as consumers, for the honesty with which they portray "life on the streets".
So, television is different, and the BBC is more different still. Everyone from the government to the Catholic church is on its case about how unfairly it represents them. And if that was not enough, Alibhai-Brown has joined in too. "The BBC will still not see me as an equivalent of, say Peter Hitchens, or Jonathan Freedland," she claims.
One reason why the BBC may not see Alibhai-Brown as an equivalent of that pair could be that it does not rate her as their equal as a writer and thinker. Another explanation is that the BBC is racist and/or sexist. A third option is that the BBC is racist and sexist, and that Alibhai-Brown is not that good. Who can say?
Greg Dyke famously declared that the BBC was "hideously white". It has undoubtedly become less hideously white under his control, but that's down to cosmetic work rather than major internal surgery. Jon Snow, the Channel 4 newscaster, recently noted that when black and Asian trainees enter the newsroom, they are quickly encouraged to become reporters, where they can be seen by the viewers.
At the moment we have the increasing presentation of non-whites, but not necessarily their proper representation. While it is of symbolic importance that licence payers are reflected on screen in all their myriad colours, shapes and wheelchair-friendly sizes, it is more vital that this process takes place behind the screen, where the power lies. Only then can it be said that TV, which went colour over three decades ago, will have finally stopped broadcasting in black and white.
Until such time, we must look for the egalitarian spirit wherever we can find it. And where better to start than The Crouches? The new black sitcom has been derided as "embarrassing" and "clueless" (Alibhai-Brown) and "unadulterated rubbish" (Darcus Howe). In other words, a non-discriminatory success story - for in these respects, it is just the same as white sitcoms.
Regulator says TV campaign featuring Ghanaian musicians did not perpetuate colonial stereotypes
The advertising regulator has cleared Cadbury of racism and perpetuating colonial stereotypes of African people in its latest TV advertising campaign.
Cadbury's campaign featured Ghanaian musician Tinny and aimed to promote the chocolate brand's tie-up with the Fairtrade organisation for cocoa from the African nation for its Dairy Milk range.
The Advertising Standards Authority received 29 complaints that the TV campaign was demeaning to African people and perpetuated racial stereotypes.
However, the ASA's council has decided not to formally investigate the complaints. "Although the council acknowledges that Cadbury had used stereotypes in their ads, they felt that the stereotypes were not harmful or offensive," said the ASA, which argued that most ads use some form of stereotype device to get a message across.
Cadbury has steadfastly maintained that the company went to "considerable lengths" to ensure that the ad campaign was culturally sensitive and developed as a "joyous and uplifting portrayal of Ghanaian culture and something which Ghanaians can feel proud of".
In 2007 the ASA banned an ad for Cadbury's Trident chewing gum, which featured a black "dub poet" speaking in rhyme with a strong Caribbean accent, after more than 500 complaints that it was racist.
As controversy builds around British National Party leader Nick Griffin's imminent appearance on BBC1's Question Time, Channel 4 is set to stoke the race debate by giving airtime to two professors who believe black people are less intelligent than white people.
The documentary, fronted by former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar, will explore what the broadcaster describes as "science's last taboo".
In the documentary, Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, Psychology professor Richard Lynn will say there is a global "league table", using evidence from IQ tests, to claim that intelligence is based on race, with north-east Asians in the top tier and Australian aborigines at the bottom.
Fellow psychology professor John Philippe Rushton, who has claimed that Europeans are more intelligent than Africans – and that men are cleverer than women – will also appear in the programme, due to be broadcast later this month .
"The differences between men and women's brains are due to spatial ability, but the differences between black and white and east Asian brains is due to general intelligence," Rushton tells Omaar. "That's what we think is the situation."
The academics appear as part of Omaar's investigation into controversial claims made by Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer James Watson two years ago that black people are less intelligent than other races.
Channel 4's head of specialist factual, Ralph Lee, said Omaar, now a presenter on Arabic language news channel Al-Jazeera International, also spoke to scientists who drew "radically different conclusions" to the views held by Lynn and Rushton.
"Does genetic science back up the idea that race and intelligence are linked? It is absolutely clear that it does not support the link. Rageh is able to challenge and present the absolute opposite arguments," added Lee.
"He didn't start with a fixed position – he started with an open mind – and he discovers that there are inequalities in society that are leading people with different backgrounds to perform differently and succeed differently in society and that is nothing to be comforted by.”
"He thinks there are important things that need to be addressed but he thinks the idea of a link between race and intelligence or the idea that skin colour is an indicator of intelligence is complete nonsense."
Another Channel 4 documentary in the season of programmes, Race: Science's Last Taboo, will ask whether there are biological advantages to being mixed race. The season is being supported by a marketing campaign showing a mixed-race Margaret Thatcher and a white Usain Bolt.
Oona King, the Channel 4 head of diversity and former Labour MP, said: "With race we will always have a heated debate. The point about this season is that I think it will change the terms of the debate. There is no point sweeping it under the carpet."
BBC1's celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing was at the centre of a race row earlier this month when it emerged that dancer Anton Du Beke had made a racially tinged remark about his dance partner Laila Rouass.
The show's veteran presenter Bruce Forsyth later said the nation should get a "sense of humour" about the incident and compared it to Americans calling English people "limeys".
But King said Forsyth had missed the point. "I have a lot of sympathy for people who are not sure what is or isn't acceptable to say. My view is we need to open up the terms of the debate, not close it down," she added.
"The key point for me is that when people say you don't have a sense of humour, they are not taking the context into account. The context for a black child who is being bullied day in, day out and called racist names is entirely different from an off-the-cuff remark as Bruce was saying about limeys."
Griffin is due to appear on Question Time next week, with fellow confirmed panellists including the justice secretary, Jack Straw, and the black writer and critic Bonnie Greer.
King said it was important that viewpoints such as those held by the BNP were challenged in the mainstream. "My personal view is that if you don't confront people with counter arguments you allow them to move into a vacuum, especially when there is disillusionment with mainstream parties," she added. "I think it is incumbent upon the mainstream to challenge views that are reprehensible and off the wall."
The director shouts "Cut!" - and wardrobe, props and make-up people swarm the set. One of the principal actors beckons me over and asks: "Can you pronounce it for us again?" As I say "Alhumdulillah" (praise to God) the rest of the cast repeat it over and over until they are satisfied it sounds right. In the meantime, I am pulled into a discussion about the Indian sweets on set: are they the right ones; by tradition, which character would give them to whom?
I am not on the set of a British Asian film, but rather at the studios of EastEnders. For six months I have been working as one of a group of occasional consultants: looking over scripts, sometimes being on set, and advising on aspects of British Asian culture relating to the Masoods.
Playing unsafe
Albert Square's previous Asian family, the Ferreiras, were criticised as boring and unrealistic - their first names were a mixture of Muslim and Hindu, their surname was Portuguese. "We admittedly came under the spotlight with the Ferreiras," says John Yorke, the BBC's controller of drama production. "We played safe with them and ultimately didn't give them good story lines. We're certainly not doing that with the Masoods, but the devil is in the detail and now pretty much everything we write for them that has a cultural or religious aspect is checked."
While the Ferreiras were "safe", the Masoods' current story line is at the other end of the scale - with the elder son, Syed, embarking on a gay affair. "Part of the reason we chose the Masoods is that it does present us with a whole new set of taboos," admits Yorke. However, he says merely being able to feature such an issue is a positive sign. "Post 9/11, Muslim characters in drama became either saint or terrorist - there was no middle ground. But the fact that we can now actually do a gay Muslim story line is testament to exactly how much we've moved on."
EastEnders is the third most popular series among ethnic minorities, according to Barb, the audience ratings body, behind The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent: on average 43% of the non-white TV viewing audience watch the programme. It also has a long history of featuring black and Asian characters: the first episode included a Turkish cafe owner.
And although cliched roles in soaps and primetime dramas also still exist, ethnic minority representation in drama has advanced across the board over the last decade or so with dramas such as the recent Moses Jones, which focused on issues in London's Ugandan community, and characters such as Anwar in Skins.
But Coronation Street's key Asian character, Dev, is rarely seen through the prism of his religion, and Channel 4's Hollyoaks takes a similar approach with its black and Asian characters. Does that make characters less realistic? Lucy Allan, series producer on Hollyoaks, says the show is keen not to hammer home ethnicity. "We recently had a skin bleaching story line around one of our female Asian characters, and obviously that is a culturally specific issue and it had a big reaction; some viewers were shocked, others identified with it. But as a rule we don't look at any of our ethnic minority characters in terms of just their ethnicity, and if the online viewer forums are anything to go by, we've got it right."
Research and consultation are employed by most broadcasters when it comes to black and Asian characters. But while this is a short cut to accuracy, it would perhaps not be necessary if there were more off-screen talent diversity.
Ade Rawcliffe, diversity and talent manager for Channel 4, believes there is still not enough representation behind the camera. "We're trying hard to make it easier to get in, to make it not about who your dad is, but there is still a way to go. There is no shortage of people from minorities looking to get into the industry, but finding and nurturing that talent is key."
Black Doctor Who
For Ben Stephenson, the BBC's controller of drama commissioning, on-screen representation is potentially even more important than off-screen in terms of attracting minorities to the industry. "The more on-screen we can do with minorities, the more those groups will feel like television is a realistic part of their experience and therefore a career option for them."
Stephenson insists that desire for more minority representation was not behind the casting of a black actor as Friar Tuck in Robin Hood. "Obviously you wouldn't cast a black actress in the role of, say, Margaret Thatcher but in a fantasy series like Robin Hood you've got leeway to play around with the characters. Similarly with Doctor Who - it's the least of our concerns whether the Doctor is black or white, it really is just about who is right for the part."
Yorke agrees that on-screen portrayal has improved, but acknowledges that diversity in the off-screen teams is still an issue. "We're working hard to rectify that, and what we really need is a long-term strategic investment in talent."
Things are changing - but given that one writer recently asked me "exactly how this praying five times a day works", there is some way to go before the industry can be sure that a lack of off-screen diversity is no longer an issue.
