Television
Soft targets
Martyn Harris
reader called Mr G. Stone, of ‘Greenacres', Arcot Road, Sidmouth, writes to complain of the 'unrivalled fatu- ity' of the political comment in this column (The Thatcher Years, the Panorama special on the Warrington bombing, etc). He is right, of course. A television critic has no business talking about dull stuff of which he knows little and cares less, but I like get- ting letters from people who give their houses' names instead of numbers. I want to know more about them, to understand their ways, and for some reason being fatu- ously rude about Conservative ministers is the best method of flushing them out.
It is when all the letters you get are com- plimentary that you have to worry, and Spitting Image has a serious problem here (ITV, Sunday, 10 p.m.). The show is watched avidly at Westminster and is always getting tapes and photographs from politicians who want to become serious in styrofoam. Michael Heseltine so liked his puppet that he tried to buy it and was only put off by by the producer who said he could have it in return for a large donation to the Labour Party.
For all its venom (and Spitting Image is far more abusive than any comparable satire show) the distancing effect of the 'I'm afraid you have greenfly, Mrs Atherton.' Puppets makes it curiously harmless, even affectionate. They are essential for the show to get away with what it does — the gobbing Hattersley, the straitjacketed Mag- gie, the Nazi Tebbit would attract instant writs if played by actors — but they also Prevent real damage being done.
It is most effective in its least important area, which is showbiz satire, and the new series only has two new politico puppets: the Michaels Howard and Portillo. The others are the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, Naomi Campbell and three Danny Bakers (one for radio, one for the TV chat show and one to do the adverts). They are lightweight targets, which makes the attacks feel over-emphatic, as with 'Mr Smiles' David Baddiel who is provided with a relentless succession of unfunny lines along the lines of: 'The thing about shoes is, like, they are crap'.
Most promising innovation of the show was the 'live interview' slot, where the pup- Pets meet the public. This week a plaintive John Major vox-popped the voters on Westminster Bridge and could find only one girl who was prepared to vote for him again. 'And what do you do for a living?' asked the puppet PM. 'A researcher for the Adam Smith Institute,' came the doleful reply.
Brian Sewell would look good in foam rubber: the Nero haircut, the strangulated delivery, the tongue restlessly checking the fillings for flaws. The art critic of the Lon- don Evening Standard has taken on every- one in his time: Picasso, Bacon, Howard Hodgkin the other day. Who does Brian Sewell actually like? we ask each other on the Tube. But this week he went for the big one in the shape of Leonardo da Vinci (PAccuse, Channel 4, Tuesday, 9.30 p.m.). For five centuries we have been condi- tioned to believe that Leonardo was the greatest of all painters; that he was the uni- versal genius; the Renaissance man. He was nothing of the kind.'
Sewell put together a respectable case: the meagre oeuvre of a dozen or so paint- ings; the vaunted skills in architecture Which produced not a single building; the anatomical dabbling which was 20 years behind the serious practitioners; the pio- neering of aviation which went unnoticed until 1936. Da Vinci, according to Sewell, Was a lifelong dilettante, who failed almost compulsively to produce finished or durable work. Sigmund Freud was sum- Toned as witness to the artist's narcissism, its roots in his illegitimacy and homosexu- ality, which gave him no real interest in the work, only in drawing attention to himself. Sewell clearly knew what he was talking about, but it made me think of Tolstoy, Who gave a similarly iconoclastic kicking to William Shakespeare in his essay 'Shake- speare and the Drama', to equally small effect. The only test of artistic merit in the long run is survival. Shakespeare survives, Tolstoy survives, da Vinci survives, but Mr Sewell merely lingers on.
Previous page
