Television
Black and White- TV
By PETER FORSTER THESE off-peak weeks for ad- vertisers seem to mean that ITV's commercials must con- stantly emit that demonstrably untrue little jingle which states that 'The only way to, seeeee What's coming on ITVeee Is to go and buy the TV Times!' Programmes can also, obviously, be gleaned from daily papers : QED. A small matter, but one sometimes wonders how far ITV supervises or in- vestigates the innumerable claims made in the commercials. Perhaps every product does every- thing claimed for it; perhaps. . . . Passed to Consumer Research Ltd. for some of their re- vealing surveys. However, the old-established principle of TV advertising remains immutable : what is too banal to be said must be sung.
I notice that with more than one product now, when a seductive approach is clearly aimed at, an American voice is employed. Last week's pro- testation by ITV that they do not use more than a small percentage of American material over- all is less impressive when examined in the closer context of peak-hour viewing; for in- stance, this week five evenings offer an hour or more of American filmed shows between six- thirty and ten-thirty, not to mention the pseudo- American products from home studios. The BBC at least keeps its Americana to the less obtrusive early-evening times. But, incidentally, ITV is a great deal more expert in 'trailing' its pro- grammes, by methods far more enticing than those lop-sided stills and bare pronouncements with which the BBC, characteristically half- hearted in the market place, tends to inform us of its wares.
TV's coverage of the fortnight's major domestic news, the Little Rock 'n' Roll race riots, has been fascinating to observe. Only Mr. Woodrow Wyatt was missing; otherwise it seemed a really big crisis, and but for the fact that I live a hundred yards from where some of the disturbances took place I might well have thought that Paddington was actually all in flames. The turbulent priest himself, Father Huddleston, spoke predictably on Tonight, and tried to speak in reply to a barrage of dim, earnest questions on ATV's Sunday night re- ligious forum. James Cameron argued with unusual ineffectiveness against a Nottingham MP on Tonight and inevitably took the view that we, the British, are to blame for this, as for most other things. The Right to Reply had a young Jamaican girl and a strident gentleman talking loudly at cross-purposes. And most of all this left me feeling that nobody had put up any sort of reasoned case for non-violent, non-tyrannical segregation; also that a discussion is only possible if its protagonists occasionally listen to each other.
Then we had pious platitudes from the TUC and those well-known working men, Tom Driberg and Sir Vincent Tewson. But for my money infinitely the most cogent sense and on- the-spot knowledge was conveyed by George Rogers, local Notting Hill MP, in an ITN in- terview, blaming the disturbances not on funda- mental racial antagonism but on provocation in the first place by the criminal ullage among otherwise well-behaved immigrants. This view probably does not recommend itself to Mr. Driberg, who has recently been complaining uf bias in TV news reporting (the case for the terrorists in Cyprus, one gathers, is not being put sufficiently well); which raises an intriguing problem in precedence, for Mr. Rogers is also a Socialist. But then, perhaps some Socialist truth is truer than others, and less biased.
Of the fortnight's two major drama produc- tions, one succeeded, the other did not. A-R's As I Die was described as 'an experiment in tele- vision,' based on Wilder's The Ides of March. Stanley Miller, the adaptor, supposed Cesar's life flashing kaleidoscopically before his eyes as he fell in the Forum. Just as the book is not quite a novel, so this was not exactly a play; yet the book's subtlety and depth had gone, and what remained was a kind of You-Were-There docu- mentary which must have puzzled more people than it instructed. Even Cmsar's superb remark, 'If I were not Caesar now, I would be emsar's assassin,' a gift I would have thought to any adaptor, was not used. Producer Robert Tron- son had great fun with all sorts of camera tricks, but apart from Heather Chasen as the whorish Clodia, the acting was mediocre, especially in the principal part. Aut Caesar, aut nihil: David Oxley is a handsome jenue premier who mig'ht well be taken up more by films, but his languid and monotonous Caesar (with a full head of hair, too, if you please!) was a nonsense for which he was less to blame than those who cast him, and ignored Wilder's careful insistence on the great man's 'frightening' effect and quality of 'weight,' or auctoritas.
Granada's cannily chosen tribute to rep, Monkhouse's Mary Broome, was a complete suc- cess. The resemblance of the 1910 Leonard Timbrell to Osborne's Dillon-Porter prototype has been widely noted (and was underlined by Robert Stephen's performance); it was indeed 3 fascinating anthology of hints of drama to come, and II was also taken by the sheer sparkle of the dialogue in its own right. Olive McFarland made a notably promising debut as the tremulous little blonde mouse of a seduced maid who eventually makes up her own mind and decamps to Canada with the milkman. Too long neglected, this is a play which reps everywhere should add to their repertoire.
Random moments. If orchestras can be satis- factorily televised, I cannot imagine the job done better' than was the Barbirolli-Katin perform- ance from the Free Trade Hall : producer (ITV), Peter Cotes. . . . After nearly forty episodes of existence, Star and Co. have actually decided to appoint a Sales Manager. . . . What an unim- pressive showing Cannon of the ETU made on his ITV interview : 'Faith, I see an equivocator!' ... If I were in talent scout biz I would tip a new lad with a long clown's face who appeared on Val Parnell's beautifully produced Saturday Spectacular; his name was Roy Carson and he might well go far, provided they don't give him his own series next week.
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