While it looks frivolous, that's probably some kind of attempt to attract... common people to the news front page. We don't have access to BBC's analytics so it's hard to determine if this technique manages funnel the unwashed masses towards quality content.
If you open up something like the World section (and subsections), you'll get a lot of good reporting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world
I also find the shows From Our Own Correspondent the Global News Podcast to be world-class news sources.