Television
Unlovable
Richard Ingrams
rrhere has been a good deal of unseemly
gloating about the crisis at TV-AM and the resignation of Peter Jay. One can only assume that it is Schadenfreude which lies behind the enormous amount of publicity, as the majority of the population has no interest whatever in breakfast television. After all, what lies behind the crisis is the fact that nobody is watching the pro- gramme.
Another reason for the gloating is that the people who have come a cropper are not really very sympathetic. It is hard to feel sorry for someone like Michael Parkinson after all those years of watching him on Saturday night buttering up the Hollywood celebrities. I would like to feel sorry for my old friend Peter Jay, but I can't help think- ing that in the long run his departure will do him good and that he will now be able to devote his time to something more in keep- ing with his considerable gifts. One thing he ought to have learned from his brief association with David Frost is the frighten- ing effects which a lifetime spent in televi- sion can have on someone. , It is of course the generally unsym- pathetic nature of the Famous Five that has been responsible for the failure of the pro- gramme. With the exception of wrinkled charmer Robert Kee, they are not a very endearing lot. Everyone is now agreed that what is wanted early in the morning is someone who is nice. Selina Scott is nice, in the same way as Terry Wogan is obviously nice. But Ford and Rippon have never struck me as very lovable. Ford was all right as a sex-pot newsreader but when she came out and tried her hand at interviewing, for example talking to teenagers about their so- called problems, she seemed hopelessly miscast. Rippon is also a newsreader turned interviewer and again, despite the BBC's endless efforts to promote her as Queen of the Documentaries, she never managed to strike the right note of informality. Try as she may, she cannot rid herself of that haughty, bossy air which reminds people of the Head Girl. Just think how different it would all have been if Terry Wogan had been there on the settee radiating charm at all the housewives and stopping them get- ting on with their daily tasks.
It would be nice to think that there is, in any case, only limited demand for breakfast television and that whatever changes Jonathan Aitken may now introduce will not make any difference. But this is too much to hope for. Television is addictive and there will always be enough people prepared to watch, whatever is on the screen.
One of the best known proponents of this view is Malcolm Muggeridge, who this week celebrates his 80th birthday and who was in- terviewed on ITV's Face the Press on Sun- day (you will search the Radio Times in vain for any birthday tributes from the BBC to one of their most distinguished broad- casters). The trio of interviewers — An- thony Howard, Alan Watkins and Alan Coren — took a rather too predictable line in their questioning, with Coren doing a disproportionate amount of talking. As so often with Muggeridge, I had the strong feeling that his critics (which all three were to some extent) were really in sympathy with his views but unwilling to admit as much. For example, Alan Watkins's obses- sion with other people's drinking habits can only be explained in terms of an inner dis- quiet about his own. Likewise those who question religious credentials, like Coren, are often only trying to lay their own doubts. All the same it remained an in- teresting and on the whole sympathetic in- terview, with Mugg in sparkling form and showing no signs whatever of his age.
However, the trouble with My Cousin Rachel (BBC2), an adaptation of the famous novel by Daphne du Maurier, is once again the length. Four hours is too long to stretch out a story of this kind which depends so much on tension. There are many good things about the produc- tion, especially the casting of the two cen- tral characters. Christopher Guard as the hero Philip is very convincing in his blind, doglike devotion and Geraldine Chaplin with her death's-head face and strong angular features is perfectly cast as the sinister Rachel. (Some of the minor characters are not so convincing.) As always the music of Patrick Gowers helps to create atmosphere. But there is just too much padding to fill out the allotted time span to make it really exciting. On Monday, for example, shots of beaming tenant farmers enjoying their Christmas grub seemed to go on for ever.
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