Happy Families , When I read on Wednesday that the
BBC is about to ring into being an imaginary family who will enact on tele- l'_"''sion a domestic saga on the lines of Mrs. Dale's, I was at first conscious of a slight sinking feeling, due, I imagine, to Intellectual snobbery. But gradually I began to see possibilities 14 this project. The programme is intended to run `for a Year or more,' but if it proves, as I expect it will, immensely rAular the BBC may be virtually compelled to extend its interesting of life, and this will involve the Corporation in some b problems. The youngest member of the ,family, a „,_°Y of eight, is being played by a boy of twelve, and the time may—indeed, must—come when the .script-writers" intentions T.01 the processes of biology will prove mutually incompatible. ,4, Moreover, a member of the cast falls ill, the substitution '',i an understudy will not be as easy or ''as acceptable as it is In sound radio or on the stage; you cannot set a whole nation h,unting the minutes until next Friday's revelation a what Dance, after Madge slapped Derek's face at the Olde Tyme 0,nece, and then confront it with an entirely different Madge. "a n the dark forces of commercial television are let loose on 13s,, the stage will be' set for every kind of villainy. Actors will j suborned. kidnapped or doped; rival concerns will bribe e've_h other's families to desert to another network; there may trial ,concerns, uniting their farces on one screen and pooling their popularity in order to do some competitor down. It may not be so bad after all.
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