Christ almighty. I don’t know what happened last night. Usually, Monday night is tragic when it comes to browsing the listings. Last night had me pinned to my chair with the marvellous Once Upon A Time In New York, and then, the magnificent Soul Survivor: The James Brown Story (More 4, Monday, 10.30pm) which had this writer twitching like one of Galvani’s frog legs (sorry if I’m being a bit too clever with that last comment, click here to see what the bloody hell I’m talking about).

Now, I should probably warn you that I’m going to be praising another TV show… yes… two in one day. I know I’ve normally got my bile on the go already, but you’ll just have to wait for that. Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are. Anyway, on with praise for JB…

James Brown is as important as Elvis and The Beatles rolled into one tight funky package. Don’t agree? Deal with it. If Elvis and The Fab Four took rock’n'roll to new dizzying heights, then James Brown became a way of life and influenced every single funk and hip-hop record ever made. After his recent passing, it was about time someone showed the man talking about his career in his own (at times indecipherable) words.

From growing up in a whorehouse that made money from untaxed liquor, to his pomp of the sixties, to the tight bone crunching military funk of the seventies, to the uneasy road of the eighties and nineties, James Brown never let the devil stray too far from his door.  Thankfully, this documentary left all the grizzly details in without smoothing over them.

To merely state that Brown was just a great purveyor of soul music is to miss the mark completely. His influence on the planets ears in enormous. Quite why he isn’t talked about in the same hushed tones saved for John Lennon and people like Mohamed Ali is, quite frankly, a disgrace. Of course, JB’s penchant for incredible tunes is plain to see, but, as this documentary showed, Brown gave more to the world than mere basslines and howls. Brown was, quite rightly, seen as a threat to the US government who didn’t like his command over the poor black communities in America.

James Brown created a huge franchise that enabled people in poor black communities to work and live, be it at his radio station or in his restaurants. However, the government got it wrong thinking he was trying to stir up the flames of hatred in what Brown referred to as "Apartheid America". When JB hollered "Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud!" and "We’d rather die on our feet than live on our knees", he wasn’t calling to arms, but trying to give young black people an identity. In his own words, "I wasn’t trying to hate… I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt nobody…".

Of course, Brown had an ego that you could see from space (you could probably put it into Google Maps and see it… it’ll be hovering over Georgia somewhere), but as the doc’ expertly showed us, the ego to keep on keepin’ on after such a dire upbringing results in one of the greatest men ever to grace an airwave. From his advice to young blacks to stay in school and not to "drop out", to his falling apart at the death of his son (and latterly, his third wife), Soul Survivor showed a fallible genius at work, at the peak of his powers and, most importantly, creating some of the greatest music ever cut to wax. Fabulous programming More 4. [Mof Gimmers]