BBC broadcaster Paddy O’Connell has criticised the way men are portrayed on the small screen.
The Radio 4 presenter said that “men seem to have become toxic”, whether they are featured on the news or in reality TV shows.
There have long been complaints that men are portrayed as ineffectual and incompetent on TV, in everything from adverts to characters such as Homer Simpson in The Simpsons and Daddy Pig in children’s TV show Peppa Pig.
O’Connell told Radio Times magazine: “From Harvey Weinstein and all that Hollywood sleaze to the hairless, stainless-toothy boys on Love Island, I’ve had it with men in the news – and men on TV.
CONFIRMED: Cool Paul is the ultimate dream man. #LoveIsland pic.twitter.com/BYBvGTRpFo
— Love Island (@LoveIsland) July 29, 2018
“For months, perhaps for years, before our eyes, men seem to have become toxic….
“But the men that I know, the men that you know, live nowhere between this fact or this fiction.”
O’Connell, who hosts Radio 4 show Broadcasting House, said a show featuring comedians and lifelong friends Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse gave him hope.
He praised the BBC2 programme, Mortimer And Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, in which the pair share their life experiences while fishing, for bringing back the “decent, boring, practical, plain and simple man” to the small screen.
The full article is in this week’s Radio Times.