Television
Streets apart
Wendy Cope
It was great,' said James. 'Bang. Bang.' He was down on one knee, firing an imaginary gun across the room. His mother looked unhappy. James is seven years old and had been staying with a friend on Saturday night. Had I not brought up the subject of Yellowthread Street (ITV, 9.25pm, Saturday), she wouldn't have found out what time he'd gone to bed.
Yellowthread Street is a new cop series set in Hong Kong, It has little to recom- mend it to those of us who aren't very interested in punch-ups, car chases and `Sagittarius: romance blossom, but beware o overspending later in the week.' shoot-outs. The men all have terrible haircuts and everyone wears awful clothes. Someone should tell the lady detective that a shoulder-bag and a rifle don't look right together. I can't recall how Cagney solves the handbag problem but she would never go round looking like that.
In the first episode the goodies were all British and the baddies were all Chinese. No, I tell a lie. There was one American baddy but she turned out to be 'a good kid' in the end. She'd had an affair with a man called Teng and he and his friends had led her astray.
Inspector Morse (ITV, 8pm, Wednes- day) is more my kind of thing. As I've said before, I try not to watch this because life is short and it lasts two hours. But now I'm hooked on Coronation Street, it's all too easy to go on sitting there, just as the schedule-planners intended.
Mesmerised by the murder at the brew- ery, I nearly forgot about the first episode of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (BBC 2, 9.25pm, Wednesday). I read Jeanette Win- terson's book two or three years ago and liked it, but I don't remember laughing a lot. On television it seems funnier and less painful. 'You don't need an airing- cupboard when you've got Jesus.' Gerald- ine McEwan, who plays the mad evangelis- ing mother, has a wonderful way with lines like that. This week, when the daughter is old enough to have a sex life, it will probably be more upsetting.
The advance publicity for this serial has made much of the fact that the writer, producer and director are all women. Since I particularly enjoyed the music, I'll men- tion the name of another woman involved in the programme, the composer Rachel Portman.
While I was rewinding the tape of Oranges, with the television set switched on, I noticed something unusual on the screen: five talking heads round a studio table and all of them female. The topic was Cosmopolitan magazine and the discussion was interesting enough to cause me to stay tuned to the end. The programme was called Behind the Headlines and a little research revealed that this is a new series, broadcast every weekday at 4.30pm on BBC 2. There's a late-night repeat, nor- mally at 12.20am, though for some reason it was earlier when I saw it. I must watch it again some time and find out if it's any good when there are men in it.
A new season of Screen Two opened on Sunday with Old Flames (BBC 2, 10.15pm) by Simon Gray. This tale of two ex-public schoolboys isn't the best play the author has ever written but the plot was too intriguing for me to switch off. Unfortu- nately, the ending left me a bit puzzled. Nathaniel seemed to be dead, then he began playing the violin. Were we meant to understand that he was really dead? I think we were. Miraculous things happen in upmarket drama and we have to learn to accept them.
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