12 FEBRUARY 1977, Page 28

Television

More banality

Richard Ingrams

Haying last seen Professor Galbraith discussing the ideas of Adam Smith while seated in a French marketplace surrounded by clucking hens, I was a bit surprised on tuning in again this week to find him lecturing on the First World War. Isn't this series supposed to be about economics, I asked myself? (There was no one else to ask as they had all long since gone to bed.) The answer is, of course, that the clever economist can relate anything—be it the First World War or the origins of ping-pong—to economics and thereby justify its inclusion in his thesis.

Galbraith's series has been attacked, quite rightly, for the ridiculous visual 'aids' that it employs to explain the Professor's theories. But if you shut your eyes and listen to what Galbraith is saying, you realise that it doesn't amount to very much. Like most economists he has a myopic view of history. With his one eye he sees only impersonal forces at work—capitalism, imperialism and so on. Thus when he explains the origins of the First World War it can all be represented on a huge chess board of Europe by models battling over their territorial rights. Individuals like the Kaiser, who you might think played a vital role in the events, are not mentioned. There are a lot of acquisitive powers and a lot of stupid generals and that equals the First World War.

The Professor's bias emerges from his treatment of Lenin, who alone is shown as a real personality, living quietly in Switzerland with his charming wife and listening to the Pathetique Sonata in his leisure moments. The clever, live Lenin_ is contrasted with the stupid, cardboard generals. If a cardboard general, why not a cardboard revolutionary?

One aspect of economics which Galbraith will not discuss is the economics of television. How is it, after all, that this tall drawling professor from Harvard comes to be lecturing us on the First World War when the job could obviously be much better done by a native like A. J. P. Taylor? The answer is that the BBC, along with all television companies, is dependent on the export trade to America. In order to finance a huge series of this sort it has to be able to sell it in the US. Therefore you must have someone whom the Americans have heard of.

Last week's play Nothing to Lose (BBCI) by John Hopkins was a humdrum little drama about a solicitor (Dinsdale Landen) whose eighteen-year-old daughter is having an affair with a wealthy middle-aged TV executive, much to the distress of the latter's emotional wife, whose eventual suicide attempt makes her husband return to the fold. The play was lopsided because it made the solicitor-father the central figure of the play whereas obviously the real drama was taking place between the daughter, the lover and his wife.

The reason for the misplaced emphasis is that Nothing to Lose is one of a series of six plays under the umbrella title of Fathers and Families. The characters overlap and presumably viewers will, for example, see at a later stage the TV man and his daughter locked in some emotional conflict. Such a scheme. has its attractions no doubt, but they could not disguise, as far as Nothing to Lose was concerned, the cliche of the situation, nor the clichés in the script. Hopkins's dialogue has a stilted theatrical tone and in essence it is banal. The solicitor appears to be a distinguished, compassionate and rather noble figure, but everything we hear about his love affairs etc suggests a pretty second-rate fellow. This is really Woman's Own stuff cleverly dressed up to look like something 'significant.' The producer is Mark Shivas, who also produced the highly acclaimed Glittering Prizes.