Television and Radio
I AM trying please, to understand about Armand and Michaela Dennis. Wimbledon's Trader and Mme Horn have been glaring fondly at me out of that little square bit of glass for what seems like years now. Every so often, like everyone else, I am enchanted by their marmosets or lion cubs or spider monkeys or whatever. But mostly 'J cringe away from Michaela's Life Force earnestness and snarl back at the hypnotic Big Brother certainty of Armand. This last week (watching a repeat)-I was still trying to understand them. 'We had a terrible night up a tree,' says Armand. And there, on one side, is a herd of wild buffalo; and there, on the other, a rhinoceros. (Pictures of Michaela, blonde, frightened and beckon- ing. Pictures of tree-climbing. Back to buffaloes and rhinoceros). 'Ho,' says Armand, 'we were verry frighten' But who is the man we never see who takes the pictures? Where is he when Croydon's favourite adventurers grapple talka- tively with nature in the raw? As television's most macabre couple flee from danger, there he stands turning the handle. I hereby nomi- nate him for a special Lime Grove Award as the Best Carrier of the Unsung Can. Simul- taneously I nominate our beloved Armand and Michaela for the Incessantest Interrupters' Prize. If only they'd take some pictures of Africa and show them to us calmly without bobbing in and out I'd be perfectly content. But if they gaze at each other lovingly just once more, or if I see just one more shot of Michaela being sweet to a Zulu girl
even suggest to Sir George that it would, be nicer to hear about Africa from a couple of ordinary people who don't shout in broken accents.
Mr. Priestley too, I've been trying to under- stand. His series got seriouser as it got serieser. The last instalment, under-rehearsed and over- scripted, demonstrated the fundamental weak- ness of the whole: Mr. Priestley has been un- able to choose between instructing and enter- taining. You can be adultly informative about dreams or you can use them as gimmicks for gags and Grand Guignol. But you can't do both; and both is what Mr. Priestley tried to do. A deal of good things have been accom- plished in You Know What People Are. But their effect has been vitiated by a worried kind of crossness. 'Ho,' says Mr. P. 'You are all very silly.' And yet, scorning us, he tries to woo us. Take us or leave us; but please don't muck us about so.
Nor do I understand the BBC's stubborn insistence on promoting mediocre show-busi- ness personalities. 'Ho,' says genteel Miss Parker, 'Isn't Yana really something?' Yana, a pretty genteel young lady herself, sang some songs and slouched about in a boned bodice. All of which I'm for. But why do we have to be asked to believe she's anything more than an ordinary little singer? Why all the build-up?
And I puzzle too, in this puzzling week, about Something to Shout About. Could a worse panel game than this be'contrived? And if it could be, could it be more sloppily con- ducted? It's a challenging thought. And not a bad idea for a new panel game, Finally, I don't understand why I enjoyed Bathnight With Braden so much. Chikly, think, because Mr. Braden has made up his good, professional mind to be professionally funny; and then has fun. He does one thing at a time and (mostly) does each thing well. Mr, Nat Temple has emerged from, this series as a delightful natural comedian, a sort of teddy-bear from the Tottenham Court Road. And Mr. Tesler's production has contributed a lot to the success of this fast-moving nonsense.
JOHN METCALF
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