WH,
I think the fact that an aged lady enjoyed and loved it.. isn't really a problem to get worked up about! The BBC had to encapsulate 6 months into 60 minutes. She has a chemistry degree from Cambridge and worked a lifetime for BP and DuPont btw, hardly canine or goldfish levels of acumen or intelligence. I concede, there was no CGI (Christ, we didn't need it!), there was no cocky cockers induced kebab house craic and there was no insight into wacky Biggles-esque personality. But you have to place the programmes's objectives into a wider arc, I can imagine what sort of thinking went into financial constraints and the pre production and commissioning discussions.
When this hour was signed off, it would have been in the aftermath of two deaths and a very public mauling. The objectives from the RAF would have (I am sure) been very specific, they would have been to allow an insight into business as normal and yes, we got some engineering and safety focus that maybe we wouldn't have got 25 or 40 years ago. We didn't need to see the fine detail, things are slowly getting back to normal, wounds are being licked and folk are recovering slowly. It was almost an hour of holding tv - and for once, none the worse for it. We didn't want to lose sight of the fact that two very fine fliers had died, that a toll had been extracted on their and other's lives.
It wasn't a celebratory hour, it wasn't trumpet blowing glorification - we are recovering from Afghan and RAFAT now has to fight for its place. This was neutral telly that struck a nice fine line between two sides of a debate. It was marker in the sand stuff that would have placed the bean counters into a state of emotional limbo - there was nothing to draw a conclusion about except the fact this was serious business and that ladies in post offices all over the country love the Reds. This isn't about appealing to a few who needed more than a casual insight to fuel their geeky or wonky insight, this was about something far bigger and far more important. This is business.