Benton Fraser

You know you've all heard the name. It’s that Mountie, from that cop show, from back in the nineties when Thitrtysomethings were teenagers and the world made a lot more sense because a Mountie worked in Chicago and kept a deaf wolf as a pet. He slept rough, was loyal to his friends and knew all the things he should know and was curious about what he didn't, the world and how it worked.

Paul Haggis – the guy who went on to write Crash (Oscar winner, not the David Lynch car fetish movie) – created a character who was – no is – everything we want our students to be. It’s true he has that monomyth stranger from a strange land, Shane, Man with no Name, vibe about him, but get beyond the stereotypical hero structure and you have a real framework for the kind of person you want in the classroom. He’s kind, he’s confident; he understands right and wrong and will follow his morality wherever it may lead. He questions well and when stumped, like all good detectives (and great students), he finds out the answer. Plus it had a great soundtrack.

TV from our youth is the foundation of our own character. How many children are plonked in front of Sesame Street to raise them? How many kids of the eighties knew more about Scott and Charlene (Neighbours) than their own family? As a surrogate TV gave us a blueprint. Michael Knight and Cagney (or Lacey) were our mother and father, Lovejoy the rascally uncle and the cast from ‘Press Gang’ the friends we really wanted to hang out with.

Today it seems different. Now that’s a cliché – but a valid one. We have lost the power of the moral upstanding citizen intruding into our children’s lives and we can’t always be the person we want to be for them. Are there in fact any heroes left in the weekly viewing that aren’t amoral vampires, antiheroes, tarts or the characters of Eastenders who to a man should all be locked up. I mean it – not one of them can hold their hands up and say I haven’t broken a law on that show. Theft, Arson, Murder - the life expectancy needs to be low to turn over characters, but do they have to be so horrible?

Sure – our heroes are flawed today. They have real issues that place them in the real world next to real people (us). But that’s not it – our heroes had flaws in the good old days. TV had heroes that were scarred beyond repair. The idiosyncratic Hannibal Smith, Narcissistic Face, Howling Mad Murdoch and the permanently enraged BA Baracus formed the A-Team. My 1980s. They were flawed as any of the mean, guttural wretches in today’s shows. But they fought against their demons to win through and save the day (on a weekly basis) rather than the self-indulgent brats that make up our television fiction today who wallow in their failings and make us all the more miserable for it.

Bring back Dempsey and Makepeace and consign tales of hookers and hoodlums (along with soap operas and the ever amoral Hollyoaks and skins) to the bargain bin – where they belong.

 I want my heroes back, and I want them heroic. There’s an entire generation that needs some inspiration out there. If we hurry we may just catch back up with Dr Banner

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