I Watched Every TV Show About the EU Referendum So You Don't Have To

This has been one of the most confusing times in British electoral history. In a general election, it's pretty easy to judge whether a government has done a good job based on a series of verifiable measures. In the EU referendum, certifiable loons bandy around statistics, projections and scare stories, nearly all of which are hard to verify and disputed by the other side. And what even is the other side? All the major leaders, past and present, are campaigning for Remain, leaving a motley bunch of powerless also-rans campaigning for Leave. Stranger still, those also-rans seem to be winning.

In all the maelstrom of uncertainty, television has tried to step in and explain what is going on. For months now the mere prospect of Brexit has wreaked havoc over the schedules, with a slew of documentaries and news specials trying to highlight the big issues at stake.

The problem is that the EU mostly involves big macro-style policy directives that are quite hard to represent visually. So TV has been doing things like graffiti a Union Jack over a flag of Europe, dress Andrew Neil up as a giant map of Germany or send someone famous to Brussels to ask confused tourists what they think about bendy cucumbers. Basically the big channels will stop at nothing to educate, inform, entertain and patronise.

But I am willing to weather these sloppy visual metaphors and people staring into the middle distance while standing outside the European Parliament, in order to work out if telly can teach us anything about Brexit. So let's begin.

What happens? A troubled Nick Robinson shuffles around the white cliffs of Dover, his white dome creasing and smoothing like the turbulent English Channel. Into the camera he bellows questions of economic uncertainty, out of control bureaucracy, but is heard only by circling gulls. Will they live have happily on the waste of booming liberated British fisheries, or starve as decreases in migrants lead to plummeting rates of dropped ice cream cones?

Once the needless outside broadcast portion is over, we delve into the BBC archives, as Robinson reveals the main purpose of this show is to trace back the splits in the Tory party over Europe. We return to the Thatcher years: her flip-flopping arguments with EU progressives Delors, Kohl and Schmidt, riling up the EEC grandees with her pursuits for "Maggie's Money" (a rebate on British contributions), signing away the British veto in the Single European Act by sneaking it through Parliament as an inconsequential market instrument. Thatcher's European policy was muddled and multidirectional. She fudged the Tory position on a federal Europe she leaves space for Euro fissures to become chasms, which led to the political mess we have today.

What can we take from it? The issue of in or out is as old as the UK's involvement in Europe, and is the defining struggle of one side of the Conservative party against the other. Whole parts of the recent story are repeating episodes from the past. Cameron marching into Brussels and demanding renegotiation of the UK's financial terms before calling a referendum was basically a play-by-play copy of Harold Wilson's similar scheme in 1975. But the most common trick, repeated by successive governments, is to boot the issue into the long grass until a bigger crisis causes ever-greater divisions.

How patronising is it? Not very, but it is rather Tory-centric. To the extent that you realise the Conservatives are basically two different parties just about gaffa-taped together to make a big blue election-winning machine.

In or Out? As more a history of Tory party disunity, this doesn't address Leave or Remain arguments much. Watching Conservatives tear their own party apart is always enjoyable, though.

What happens? Laura Kuenssberg takes the rudder of a Union Jack-bedecked speedboat to visit businesses that would be affected by Brexit. She meets some hovercraft manufacturers for whom EU's slow progress on the relevant trade agreements strangles their South American business, a cheesemaker who sells mainly to the continent, Lloyds of London who reckon Brexit would cost them millions while separate national agreements for trade were sorted out and the guy from Wetherspoons who, given his fondness for ageing patriotic soaks, probably just knows a good marketing opportunity when he sees one.

What do we get from it? Arguments to remain in the EU often seem weak because the benefits cannot be expressed in the punchy simplistic language that political campaigning requires. This show tries to remedy that. Generally Kuenssberg focuses on the single market, the giant trading block to which we'd be cutting off access to in the event of Brexit and the part of the EU the business world would miss the most. It allows tariff-free trade within its 28 member states and strikes deals with other superpowers and trade blocks.

But the show does make some lesser-heard economic arguments for a Leave vote. Remaining in the EU means it is more likely rents and house prices will keep rising as demand for housing and public services continues to grow at a time when there is little appetite in the current government to significantly increase supply. Successive governments have enjoyed the economic effects of EU immigration, but none have invested in sufficient housing and public services to keep living standards stable.

Is it patronising? There is heavy use of some B-roll of a man graffiti-ing the UK and EU flag under a bridge while Kuenssberg strides about looking concerned. Other than that it's quite on the nose.

In or Out? In. Leaving the single market would likely send the country into recession.

What happens? Paxo fixes on his most appalled grimace and walks around the various institutions of the EU. He checks out some of the duller tourist attractions and talks to various cheery members of the Parliament and Council – who frankly seem to be having rather a good time. He saves his most appalled intonation for reeling off the well-worn tropes about bendy bananas and cucumbers, as obscure EU directives flash up on screen. Sovereignty is his big thing, and he grills everyone from EU councillors to passing Inter-Railers about whether national sovereignty has been eroded by the EU.

What do we learn from it? That the EU is complex, arcane, opaque, slow-moving and idiosyncratic, just like the UK government or any other major political system you care to mention. Paxman's dislike of the EU is no secret and this comes through in spades, but there are parts of the European machinery that seem reasonable causes for scepticism, for example shifting the parliament all the way to Strasbourg for a week every month, at the cost of €100m a year.

Is it patronising? A big part of Paxman's schtick is to reel in his interview subjects with simplistic strawmen before lambasting them. So it is, but knowingly – if it condescends to its subjects it does so in order to give them enough "bonkers EU" rope to hang themselves.

In or Out? This gives some convincing arguments for out. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in Brussels that seems the exact opposite of the enterprise-friendly modern legislature that many pro-EU campaigners talk about. But then you might start to think about the unelected House of Lords, the robes of ermine, the rituals of Black Rod, gerrymandering, the braying government benches at PMQs and think, 'Well, is our system really that much better?'

What happens? Michael Crick enlists some extremely 90s Tories to give the scoop on the intra-Bullingdon feud driving two figureheads of the referendum. Like two political peas in a privileged pod, Boris Johnson and David Cameron just can't seem to keep out of each other's way, tailing each other from Eton to Oxford to the upper strata of the Conservative party. Here they face up to each other over the leadership of the party, using the EU referendum as a proxy war. Crick contends that neither is actually that committed to their chosen side: Cameron began his Parliamentary career as an "Up Yours Delors" Euro-sceptic, while Johnson's father was a member of the European Commission. We hear some unverifiable stuff about how they view each other: Boris sees Dave as dim and out of his depth, Dave sees Boris as tactless, dangerous and Machiavellian. It sure feels true even if really could all be bollocks.

What do we learn from it? Cameron bumbled into the referendum. Originally it was a tactical gamble to neutralise UKIP, that would never have been realised had the 2015 election resulted in coalition as the polls predicted. Now he has his work cut out making sure he's not remembered only as the Prime Minister who accidentally took Britain out of the EU. Johnson's Euroscepticism is a demagogic manoeuvre to distance himself from the status quo and frame himself as a Trump-style scourge of the mainstream.

Is it patronising? Clarke, Heseltine and Redwood make sure there's a puce-nosed establishment chortle every few minutes, but while the Cameron-Johnson relationship is sexed up for the teatime viewer, it is revealing and insightful.

In or Out? A pox on both their houses: it mostly feels like this referendum shouldn't be happening at all, and is more the noxious upshot of Johnson's opportunism and Cameron's precarious seat of office.

What happens? Evan Davis guides a tetchy panel of Ins, Outs and Don't Knows through the financial problems of the European project in a sit'n'chat format resembling a beanbag-free episode of The Jo Whiley Show. Everyone's bang up for some proper adult chinwag now that the watershed's long behind us, and sure enough a lot of the financial aspects of membership get an exhaustive airing. The Common Agricultural Policy and the EU Structural and Investment Fund get a good going over, with the Brexiteers, represented by rave-jawed UKIP MP Douglas Carswell and Dia Chakravarty of right-wing pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance, insisting that a post-Brexit UK would spend the £350m a week we pay in into the European budget far better than the inefficient EU.

That pesky £350m a week that keeps coming up. It seems no one can verify this famous figure that Vote Leave have emblazoned on their bus – it becomes a bone of contention throughout the show, and each mention sees Carswell squirming like a shifty Sergeant Major under court martial. Retired EU diplomat Sir Stephen Wall parries most of the Vote Leave arguments on cost and waste, but still coming across a bit of a blinkered mandarin.

What do we learn from it? Beyond the tabloid storms, there are subtler things at stake in this referendum. Farmers and poorer areas like Cornwall and west Wales receive EU subsidies, measures that a Brexiteer government would need to replace, or not, as their small-state instincts would have it. The ties between the Brexiteers and the libertarian fringes of mainstream politics cannot be overstated - the Chief Executive of Vote Leave Matthew Elliot is also head of the Taxpayers' Alliance and NO to AV, and as such is one of the most successful campaigners for small-state conservatism. The Brexiteer "shadow cabinet" that is gathering in the wings - Gove and Johnson aided by Elliot et al -are cooking up an extreme, minimalist form of government to go in the EU's place.

Is it patronising? Some of the VTs are played for some bendy banana lols, but otherwise it's a grown-up debate, albeit with a hint of disingenuousness from Vote Leave over their £350m per week figure.

In or Out? Still In, I'm afraid. Carswell and Chakravarty as a duel personification of what would be ushered in in place of the EU is really quite revolting.

And that's about it. Except it's not because in the next two weeks there are ten (ten!) referendum debates across the main channels. After this is all over, the promise of World War Three and the destruction of European peace sounds like sweet relief.

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