Frances Grant: St Clare of Assisi, the patron saint of TV

COMMENT

Paul Holmes has gone to Prime, TVNZ has announced its programme line-up for next year and if ever there was a time to pray to St Clare, this is it.

St Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) is the patron saint of television. Okay, it's a role which is a little incongruous given that Clare spurned her family wealth and took a vow of poverty. Had she lived in modern times, this presumably would have excluded ownership of material things, such as home entertainment centres and flat-screen TVs.

She was awarded the title by with-it 1950s Pope Pius XII who was fascinated by the emergence of television as the hot, new communications medium.

When it came to saints, the Pope knew his stuff. A witness at Clare's canonisation testified that when she was too sick in bed to attend Mass, God sent her a vision in which she saw and heard the Mass as clearly as if she'd been in the convent chapel. In other words, God laid on a special live broadcast, although there's no mention of who was presenter.

Whether St Clare has been up to the job lately is debatable — what would Pius XII make of Extreme Makeover, for example, the depiction of God in bro'Town, or just the decidedly un-nunlike levels of sex and violence on TV generally — but, as Clare was best mates with St Francis of Assisi, perhaps that's why we got Animal Hospital and The Zoo.

More likely, however, is that St Clare is not widely known in the secular world and her powers have been ignored. After all, the saints market is bearish these days compared to the bullish one for angels. But now is the time to put her to the test and ask for an intervention.

Please, St Clare, may we have a decent current affairs programme to replace the personality-driven, syrupy "human dramas" of the Holmes show? Let Holmes go play on a minority channel and may your colleague St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, bless him on his journey.

Meanwhile, one commercial half-hour a day of quality information and interviews on a mainstream channel is surely not too much to ask.

Perhaps you could get another of your associates, St Anthony, patron saint of lost things, to help TVNZ to remember the talent in the more obscure slots of its schedules. Look at the early Saturday morning line-up for example — Face to Face with Kim Hill, Agenda, Eye to Eye — and there's a number of shows I'd rather have watched at 7pm on a weeknight instead of Holmes.

Come to think of it, I'd rather have watched a decent bit of minority programming, like the thoughtful Asia Down Under. Clare, you are in a position to remind the Lord of that parable about lights being hidden under bushels.

And please, although it does look hopeless, could we have some exciting, intelligent new drama? The Sopranos and Six Feet Under are old and tired.

Please put in a special plug for the quality Brit drama refugees. UKTV might have the likes of Daniel Deronda (too literary for TV One, no doubt) and The Crow Road (when it played on TV One it was cunningly hidden in a late-night slot), but to find them you have sift through all those crap fillers such as Castles of Scotland and all that sycophantic tosh about the royal family.

St Clare, your existence was proved this year by the surprise apparition of a topnotch Brit drama, State of Play, one worth staying in for. Even in these days of the denomination of reality TV, miracles can happen.