Taylor Swift: The End of an Era is bland and perfunctory

There’s a key moment in the 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, made during the singer’s 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. It’s not when she’s mock-fellating a water bottle, or when then paramour Warren Beatty dryly observes: “She doesn’t want to live off-camera.” It came later, when Madonna saw director Alek Keshishian’s often unflattering footage and allowed it to be shown anyway. Madonna understood that art is only possible when the mask is ripped off.

I’m reminded of this watching Taylor Swift: The End of an Era (Disney+), a six-part behind-the-scenes docuseries about her global 152-date, multibillion-dollar-generating Eras tour. Like the tireless powerhouse at its centre, the series works hard to give bang for its buck (there’s a lot about “Swiftonomics”, the tour’s boosting of national economies). But unlike Swift – the artist, the woman, the phenomenon – it’s a teensy bit dull.

The series opens on the final 2024 date in Vancouver, Canada, with Swift dragging her dancers into a pre-show pep talk and opining about the creative process: “It’s our job to make this look effortless.” It then proceeds to show the inner workings of high-level international touring: rehearsals, special guests (Ed Sheeran, Florence Welch), sets, crews, tweaks for new material, hair, makeup and wardrobe (Swift clomping about in her sparkly boots).

Then there are the Swifties – an estimated 10 million worshipful bums on seats. They’re a crucial part of the spectacle, but there are too many panning shots of crying, transfixed fans. The same goes for the endless interviews with tour musicians, choreographers and dancers: no disrespect, but is anyone interested in their capital-J “Journeys”? Their inclusion feels like a distancing mechanism, a way to politely steer us away from the queen bee of pop herself.

Some parts are affecting. A foiled terrorist plot to attack the tour results in cancelled dates in Austria. Off-camera, the singer meets with the families and survivors of the 2024 Southport stabbing atrocity, where three little girls died at a Swift-themed dance class. Afterwards, Swift is seen sobbing, but then feels she has to rally: “It’s my job to be able to handle all these feelings and perk up immediately to perform.”

Elsewhere, a phone call with now fiancé Travis Kelce feels comically stilted. “Thanks for making my life better,” you hear him saying. It’s like they’re pumping each other up for an important PowerPoint presentation. And after being impressed reading about Swift’s generosity in giving huge bonuses to her touring crew – to a total reputed sum of £147.3m – I’m disappointed to see the moment of giving and the reactions of the team members filmed. Odd how celebrities obsess about their own privacy but seem to overlook everyone else’s.

The main problem of the series, however, is that it’s bland and perfunctory. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, and Swift could yet be filmed having a dressing-room meltdown. As it is, she talks of wanting to “overserve” her fans, but the programme only overserves backstage padding. With some surprisingly tepid critical responses to her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, it could merely be that brand Taylor is overextended and exhausted. Increasingly these days, it reminds me of one of those nose-to-tail restaurants – every last bit of the beast is used.

What happened to Emily in Paris? Has the Netflix show, still hugely popular, morphed from a hate watch to a meh watch? People used to bristle at the mere mention of Emily, played by Lily Collins as a fashion-obsessed American working in a fantasy Paris, where French characters are “ooh la, la”-trilling caricatures and the Eiffel Tower seems plonked in the background of every shot. Emmanuel Macron loves it though – it attracts tourists – and the president’s wife, Brigitte, has appeared in it.

In the new fifth series of the comedy drama (created by Sex and the City’s Darren Star), Emily, sporting a chic Louise Brooks bob, still teeters about like a tiny, overdressed doll. Much of the story is staged in Italy – in Rome and Venice – yet it remains all fashion industry frolics and love affairs. Emily’s “Mr Big”, the Parisian chef Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), is somewhat sidelined, while she and her pals cavort with new lovers in spray-on chinos. Minnie Driver shows up as an impoverished aristo and injects some welcome snark (“I’d sell my eggs but they’re probably devilled by now”).

Here and there, there’s a game attempt to be cultural, as with mentions of la belle époque (“the golden life”, someone helpfully mistranslates), but the scriptwriters are wasting their time. Part of Emily in Paris’s strange and terrible allure is that it views the world as the Insta generation does – as a series of landmarks where you can wear super outfits and take flattering images. Is this frothy show still intrinsically infuriating? Mais oui! But the heroine seems to have beaten her audience into submission.

On ITV1, Marshall Corwin’s feature-length documentary Steve Backshall’s Royal Arctic Challenge sees the explorer and naturalist retrace the steps of a 10-day tour the future King Charles took 50 years ago to the Canadian Arctic, where he tried dog-sledding and ice-diving.

The real theme here is the climate crisis: how it’s accelerating in the region three times faster than the rest of the world, devastating the ecosystem and threatening species. Backshall searches for polar bears and seals, rides on dog-pulled sleds, observes Indigenous people throat-singing and dives into freezing water, a daunting metre of ice above him.

Arctic scenes are interspersed with the presenter talking about climate conservation with Charles at Buckingham Palace: “I don’t want to be accused by my grandchildren of not doing anything about it,” says the king. It’s all beautifully shot, the campaigning message juxtaposed with the dazzling snowy vista in a vision of stark brutality and near-Narnian mysticism.

Photographs by Disney+/ AP