27 DECEMBER 1957, Page 14

The Year on Television

WHATEVER the audience figures may show, this has been the BBC's year on television. The commercial people are still followers and perhaps always will be until the regional companies take note of Mr. Bernstein's technique of feeding back to the network a limited number of very carefully planned productions. The BBC's biggest triumph has been to fill the six-to-seven gap with first-class. material. Perhaps for moral reasons, perhaps for economy, the Corporation wanted to keep the screen dark at that hour, but the Independents would not have it, though they had no clear idea how to fill the gap. Tonight is one of the great successes of television. It is an assembly of pocket documentaries made up of the kind of news 'specials' with which the London evening papers used to enliven their columns before the war. It is characterised by energy, spontaneity and originality, and a very relaxed relationship be- tween viewers and performers. This ease has sel- dom been attained in British broadcasting either of sound or of vision because until Tonight nobody ever got enough practice before camera or microphone. The Michelmore manner cannot be attained even by once-a-week appearances. Even that grand veteran Dimbleby sometimes is seen very ostentatiously relaxing. The strain on producers is reduced too by it, they are not confined to one show a fortnight. The captain of the Tonight team is Donald Baverstock. If there was a television Oscar he'd be my candidate for 1957. The other BBC triumph is Six-Five Special on Saturday nights, which has five million viewers over the age of sixteen and uncounted millions below that age. Its gimmicks are pretty awful and its signature tune is thin (compared, say, with Trumbauer's Choo Choo of 1930). Sometimes it has been distasteful—a song now and then too blatantly sexy for a young audience. But the youthful high spirits and rotundity of jazzmen, skifflers and singers, the rock 'n' roll kids in the background, are enormously cheerful. Josephine

Douglas is, I believe, the creative genius behind it.

For experiment in drama I commend Ian McCormick's cycle of four plays. Not enough fuss was made of his achievement. For documen- tary, there were the Duke of Edinburgh's two programmes, Around the World in Forty Minutes (producer Anthony Craxton got an award for this one) and the 1GY programme. The BBC has shown some courage in dealing with prostitution, homosexuality and other social subjects which still make Fleet Street coy. It also gave a brief glimpse of the birth of a baby.

Television has still a lot of problems to solve, especially in the presentation of discussion pro- grammes. But the BBC, inspired by ITV News, has improved the manner of its news presentation so that it is no longer the voice of the Establish- ment talking to the poor gammas. BBC journal- ism is still, however, mediocre. The party con- ferences I thought were poorly done. The Queen's visit to Paris was seen as a sheer spectacle and the reactions of the French were not seen to be the most important aspect of the visit.

What can we say of Independent Television? I'm in a difficulty because it seldom shows the kind of programme I and a minority of viewers want to see at a time when we can see it. Nevertheless it was on ITV that I saw the best single item of the year—the Granada production of Death of a Salesman. The news edited by Geoffrey Cox with the assistance in the past few weeks of Mark Arnold-Forster is often first rate. Alan Taylor's lectures have been splendid. Are there more Taylors in the academic world, men who can talk extemporaneously to an audience of wide range? What the Papers Say was good when it began but needs several formulas if it is to hold attention. Filially, can I, as a semi-pro occasional critic, say how lucky I think television is to have four regular critics such as Messrs. Black, Hollowood, Wiggin and Richardson, whose patience, stamina, wit and common sense are amazingly well maintained.

JOHN COWIIURN