Fry's missed the mark with Eye Spy.

Every time I return to my family home in Devon, I am shocked at how insecure and threatened the residents of my leafy and dreary village feel. Isolated from society, they feed on tabloids of hyperbole as if it the most nourishing and representative portrayal of modern society. I spend a good proportion of time talking to friends and family, explaining that despite to their beliefs, people do not walk openly around cities armed with machetes instead of handbags (well, why carry a purse when you can just decapitate the shopkeeper?)

Stephen Fry's Eye Spy is an attempt to reassure the public that contrary to what the tabloids would have us believe, society is not drowning slowly from the selfishness that - depending on your political persuasion - is a direct result of either capitalism, immigration or communism. The Daily Mail's seemingly sole purpose to bolster the hardliners and tempt us blindly into a sense of hatred and bitterness that has become as much of a British stereotype as fish and chips and tea and biscuits. The Mirror exists purely to blame Margaret Thatcher. For everything. Ever.

But Stephen Fry has missed the mark. For, as much as this programme is a blessing to me as educational material on society that I can recommend to my Mail-reading grandmother in a desperate attempt to satisfy her that Britain is not the hornets' nest of crime that she has been convinced to sincerely believe, it is no less farcical than the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.
Just as a 4 year old Jazz dancer is not possibly as talented as a 22 year old world champion in Samba, a 6 year old being challenged not to eat a marshmallow does not prove that society is moral any more than someone's ability to look after a goldfish without killing it. My sister at the age of 6 would not be able to restrain herself against the sugary allure of a marshmallow for more than 8 seconds yet she is someone I always look to for moral guidance. And even now, she cannot be trusted with a goldfish.

It is the constant stream of headlines about Britain's emerging moral black hole that scares people into believing that we are 'going to the dogs'. My grandmother, who is the epitome of the grey voter, has begun locking the back door whilst she's in the kitchen in case the village's sole Nigerian resident decides to pop round and savagely end her life whilst simultaneously assuming her identity and stealing her credit cards. Midsomer Murders, in my grandmother's mind, is more a portrayal of ITV News than an ITV Mystery Drama.

I was already having doubts about Eye Spy: it's nice to have a comforting night in with a hot chocolate watching people affirming your faith in humanity, but is this a real representation of Britain today? Would people actually react in the way Channel 4 would have us believe? Then my friend told me that in one of the restaurant scenes, two of the people who reacted badly to the contentious waiter-character that no-one would ever take seriously, spouting out ironic and lazy racist insults at a mixed race couple, were from his drama school. They had been asked to come and eat at a restaurant. They knew they were being filmed. They responded accordingly.

It seems to me that, although providing me with some nice light entertainment that feels like it's been dreamt up by some communist dictator to make people be nicer to each other, Eye Spy is about as real as the ingredients of the marshmallow placed in front of the naturally disobedient children. Britain is not that bad, and racism is generally frowned upon. But actors don't need to convince us with that: Britain is a multicultural and diverse society. We have our problems but we have exceptional strengths also.

What Britain needs to hold it together is community, not Channel 4's soft power exertion that looks like a new format of Supernanny's special selection of material for Cbeebies. Stephen Fry would do better to educate us, than patronise us into being nice.