“Hang in there,” you would sometimes like to whisper to the Op1 presenters. There was another such moment on Monday evening, when Tijs van den Brink (EO) was forced to listen live to a long math lesson from teacher slash YouTube hit Menno Lagerwey (Math with Menno) towards the end of the broadcast. It remains fascinating to see the presenters switch from extremely intense themes (this time including the war in Ukraine and failing care in prison) to an ultra-lighthearted afterthought (hip math lessons).
Van den Brink in particular has the gift of doing this without changing tone or expression, or building bridges. He concluded an intense item about palliative care and then immediately announced without any fuss that the final exams would start in two weeks and that students therefore turned to mathematics idol Lagerwey. You wanted a pleasant ending? Well, take it.
To encourage the presenter (who had to endure the math lesson on his own due to the absence of his EO counterpart Margje Fikse), I will apply his no-nonsense tactics here once. Heavy main meal, light dessert – and above all, no breathing space between courses.
Finding heavy food is not difficult in the run-up to May 4. Where NTR had the confrontational youth program on Sunday I’m invisible broadcast about Jewish children who disappeared during the Second World War (sometimes temporarily, more often permanently), it was the turn of the most famous young face of the Holocaust on Monday evening: Anne Frank. In the first part of the four-part Closer to Anne Frank (AVROTROS), presenter Hila Noorzai followed the material-technical research into Anne’s diary. That research started in 2021 and was intended to provide two insights: insight into Anne’s working method in writing the diary, and insight into how Anne’s exhibited writing could best be preserved.
We will probably hear more about that spelling in the next episodes. This first part especially offered a fascinating insight into the practical and technical aspects of dealing with the original writing. It was moving to see how much concentration and awe Anne’s diary and notebooks, now over eighty years old, were handled by the only paper restorer who was allowed to touch the fragile items over the past twenty years: Elizabet Nijhoff Asser. In the meantime, she was already busy preparing her successor (Herre de Vries), so that he could soon take over this special task from her. The duo’s dedication made them curious about the upcoming episodes, which can be previewed online.
Meditate and air fry
The Eurovision Song Contest starts in a week, and viewers therefore turned to Frisian idol Joost Klein on Monday. Just before he boarded the plane to Eurovision destination Malmö (Sweden), he spoke generously to the press, dressed in a black version of his green ‘Europapa’ suit. How had he prepared himself for the supreme moment in recent weeks? In addition to “just practicing,” Klein’s preparation appeared to have consisted of “meditation and a lot of air frying.”
Perhaps these are resources that Van den Brink can also use when in the next month and a half – until mid-June, when Op1 finally stops – a light-hearted closing hangs over his head again that requires his participation. In any case, he didn’t finish his math class. “You’re fine,” he said halfway through Lagerwey’s explanation. “I think it’s fine that way.” And the viewer whispered: “Hang in there.”
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