When Jeroen Pauw stopped with Peacock he indicated that he wanted to have ‘other conversations’. He wanted to move towards ‘reports with a little more length and depth than the issues of the week’. And also: ‘with or without a table, but no longer in a studio’.
Yet it also proves difficult for Pauw to say goodbye to that studio. In skewed growth the presenter previously examined the crooked economic growth, but that program still had a lot of table in a damn lot of studio. This did not detract from the content, because in skewed growth Pauw was indeed able to move beyond the weekly delusion by zooming in on structural problems that cannot be captured in a superficial talk show conversation.
Netherlands is Vol is the newest member of the (unofficial) series ‘Pauw & Problems’. This time, Pauw is investigating whether the Netherlands is indeed ‘too full’, and whether the limits to our growth have been reached. The program started by listing all the areas where that growth has gone too far: we are the most populous country in Europe after Malta, we have the largest European meat industry, the unhealthiest air in Europe, and so on and so forth. The central question is whether a balance can be found between prosperity and well-being.
The first episode was devoted to Schiphol, a place par excellence that justifies the populist title. The start was promising, because Pauw immediately went ‘into the field’ and delved into the numbers at Schiphol together with journalist Sander Heijne. But strangely enough, they then returned to a classically austere talk show setting, in which all talking heads quickly started to spin. Pauw had just about every aviation opinion at the table, from the boss of the airline company TUI and Minister Mark Harbers of Infrastructure and Water Management to pilot Benno Baksteen and director of Nature & Environment Marjolein Demmers. With thirteen talk show guests, The Netherlands is full mainly Studio is full.
The content was highly interesting, but at times the program also threatened to get bogged down in an average talk show. Now there is nothing wrong with that in itself, since Pauw would even laugh at all his colleagues at half strength, but it is okay with our talk show table fetishism. Later in the episode, Pauw also went to the village of Rijsenhout, where nothing has been allowed to be built for years pending a new runway. The visit was far too short, but fortunately Pauw showed himself razor sharp afterwards when Minister Harbers turned around the hot Rijsenhout mash at the table. That talk show table may be much less densely populated, but in the end it is never a punishment to see talk show Peacock at work.
The logical conclusion was ultimately that it was really time to start flying less, but the NPO programmers undermined that point in a rather cool way, by immediately following Floortje to the end of the world to broadcast. Improve the world, start with yourself: it’s hard for everyone.