Television

Instead of Lunch

DEAR MR. CARLETON GREENE,

I am so sorry you were forced to call off your most kind invita- tion to meet you at lunch today, but quite understand why, as Wilde once said, a subsequent engagement intervened! Indeed, I'm bound to say I feel just the weest bit relieved—for what if shyness had tied the tongue, or worse, if the old Adam had got out (I don't, of course, mean your esteemed Controller of Programmes) and left us no alternative but forks at five paces? Not that with a man by all accounts as civilised as yourself this would have been likely, but there are, I know, those who on the one hand say they couldn't care less about critics, and on the other grdw extremely angry when criticised. It is an attitude I find quite un- reasonable, except where novels are concerned.

But now there are only twenty days until you take over the baton as Director-General of the BBC, and I would have liked to be able to say in person how welcome it will be to have again a general who is a civilian. Many within the BBC are delighted at the prospect, as you must know, not least because they salute you as somebody who has risen from their own ranks, whereas Sir Ian was never the most familiar face to the staff, though I believe he was always very popular with the sentries, I mean doormen. I am sure that with you in charge Miss Siobhan McKenna will be allowed to say what she likes to Ed Murrow about the Northern Irish, and if BBC TV's most con- sistently excellent programme does overstep the mark through excess of zeal, Mr. Baverstock will not be quite so peremptorily, disowned from above. Old wounds? As. a staff man you will know how deep they cut.

Also I'm sure we could have met on common ground of admiration for last week's Science International, which seemed to me BBC TV at its best, with brilliant use of the medium to elucidate scientific discoveries about the origin of living matter. 1 do hope you are not of the opinion that only comics deserve repeats. And wasn't it rather interesting that Outside Broadcasts should have

done so pre-eminently well the kind of programme Talks Department often considers its exclusive province? I wonder if you are a firm believer in the rigid delineation and observance of these organisational categories? Writing as a mere viewer, I hope not, and perhaps it is a valid point that mere viewers don't care a damn about respec- tive departments, whereas some in the Corporation give the impression of not caring a damn about anything else. After all, as I'm sure you'll agree, the BBC needs all its energy for fighting outwards, especially when up against documentaries as effec- tive in what used to be its own vein as A-R's The Unwanted, about refugees.

It was neat, too, I thought, to follow Science International with a Mozart concert, implicit re- minder of 'a world elsewhere.' But oh dear, what an unsatisfactory sequel the next evening when Canon Raven commented on Science in airy, barely relevant terms of being thankful for life, just when we were in a mood to hear what, say, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool (whose argument with Muggeridge on ATV the other Sunday was so good) would have made of the scientists' deductions about the creation of life. You remember how the BBC used to have an ambiguous and much-mocked post called Director of the Spoken Word? The idea, if I understand it aright, was not altogether bad. I often think TV could do with some closer check- ing of the quality, as against the impartiality, of these innumerable talks, interviews and discus- sions. The Brains Trust is not the only proof that eminence may walk with dullness. Again, your opponents at least have the knack of adding brightness to triteness, even to perfect triteness. Don't you sometimes feel, too, that the BBC is getting a little over-obsessed with mental health and those programmes which might be termed Neurovision?

When you think of the opposition, as un- doubtedly you must a great deal, I wonder if it strikes you that their obviously sincere congratula- tions on your appointment gave, in Robert Benchley's words, an ominous sense of pats on the back getting lower and lower? Consternation on their part, it might be argued, would have been a more propitious reaction. But then, what they fear is competition, and clearly the crucial basic question to be answered during your term of office is how far the BBC proposes to compete, and how far it intends to offer (the original tables having now been turned) an alternative service to

ITV.

I hope you will not think it unduly overweening of an outsider to suggest two factors here. One is implied by the most striking (and surprising) re- mark I have heard attributed to your predecessor- but-one. Inspecting a list of names proposed for a certain project, Sir William Haley is said to have asked : 'Where's your madman?' BBC at present appears to suffer from a shortage of mad- men, as against a surfeit of smoothies. Perhaps regional TV will encourage some rough edges of experiment and eccentricity, which raises a second point—I hope the prospect of a Second Front battle over sound radio will not (as reported last weekend) divert you from efforts to secure at least half of any Third Channel. Apart from anything else, this latter offers a chance to exploit to the full your younger, brighter men, many of whom will either leave or be forced to wait repetitive years until their elders retire. After all, in com- merce they would be encouraged by expansion.

No doubt we'd have argued about this, but at

least we might have agreed that BBC TV variety is developing an individual synthesis between the intimate and the spectacular. The Julie Andrews Show, for instance, is of inconsistent quality— but why shouldn't it assume an audience intel- ligent enough to be interested in watching T. H. White being interviewed about the new Lerner- Loewe musical based on his The Once and Future King? The concept of some variety shows with minority appeal ,may be novel in TV, but did you notice that Jack Hylton is reported to have said the other day that standards could only be raised by reduced ratings? The 'spectaculars' have be- come codified to a pattern of sausage-machine gags—as witness Arthur Askey hemmed in by the script in ATV last Saturday, in contrast to the admirable David Nixon's matching of personality to material in BBC's Sunday Showtinie series. ATV are leading, though, in the thriller-serial stakes at present. Still, that was a splendid first stab your drama department made at Maigret on Sunday—Basil Sydney (Maigret), Giles Cooper (adaptor), Campbell Logan (producer) all first- class. What a pity a Maigret series wasn't tried instead of Tile Third Man. Sorry, that last name slipped out-1 was determined not to spoil lunch by mentioning it.

Of course much of this must be trivia to yogi concerned as you will be with 11,000 employees, with broadcasting as well as TV, with the regions, the training colleges, the unions, the committees. Yet, just as Max. Beerbohm remarked that it humanises a Corporation to be able to think of it walking down a street, so it will be an encourage- ment to public and producers alike to think that you, too, view. I am told that morale within the BBC rose 1,000 per cent. on the day a while ago when it became known that the Chairman, Sir Arthur fforde, had actually acquired a ssette.

Withal, may I offer good wishes for the time ahead?

Yours sincerely,

MITA FORSTER.