Television
All About Adam
By PETER FORS] ER
SPEAKIN. as an ex-teenager, I wish to say we all fink a lot abaht religion. We also fink a lot abaht bints and pools and the palais; but religion is somefing extra good, specially some of those ballads like 'I Believe.' What we don't fink much of is the Archbishop of York, who we fink is a proper Charlie of York after watchin' him talk to our Adam Faith last Sunday. For one fing, he talked to our Adam as if he was a fool—and Adam ain't no fool, he just don't fink good—like when he said abaht the Church havin' been goin' for two thaMand years, which reminds me of a friend of mine who once ran a crackin' trade on Majorca sellin' relics of the Virgin three thahsand years old. But what abaht an Arch- bishop Who says he wants the Church to appeal to 'simple people—fishermen and that sort of thing"?
Still I must admit he did smile real nice—like when he told our Adam, 'We're all sinners, you know.' I got friends wot fink it's humiliatin' for the Archbishop to be talkin' down to our Adam like that, and sayin' to old Ludo Kennedy from time to time, 'He's got a point, hasn't he?' like an old Boy Scout wot finds somebody else can light the fire better—but me, I reckon our Adam was wastin' his time, and he'd've been better off singin' with Eve Boswell.
However, the BBC had its scoop in last Sunday's Meeting Point, and made the most of it. (Whether you can imagine Reith ordering them to repeat the interview after the late-night news is another matter.) To revive an old joke, I hope we are not in for a series of Faith to Faith, and I also hope that'somehow, sometime, soon, the Christian Church, which has been the most accomplished propaganda movement since the world began, will find a formula for presenting its ministers today on television in a persuasive and acceptable manner. If this seems too harsh a judgment, reflect that ITV has dtopped its nightly Epilogue, and when ITV stops Epilogue- rolling, something must be wrong.
But where the BBC is succeeding at present is in copying and improving upon ITV programmes —they are becoming the Japanese of the tele- vision world, a fact (I note) even observed last Sunday, a couple of years after the trend began, by the old fly-fisherman himself, Maurice Wiggin. An excellent example is Z-Ca?'s, BBC's answer to the American Highway Patrol, set in a Lanca- shire Newtown. Last week's episode was about as good a crime thriller of this kind as I have seen: apparently motiveless stabbing, ruthless police chief interrogating stabbed girl, eventual narrow- ing-down of suspects, but these well-worn ingredients were given a new-thought, fresh-felt treatment which was as laconic and dramatic as that kind of life itself. I hope it will be believed that while watching without benefit of Radio Times I decided that there was only one man who could have written the script, an opinion later confirmed when I found that it was indeed by Robert Barr.
Too many people, on the other hand, could have written Mess Mates (Granada). which wastes Sam Kydd and some other good comedians in a nonsense about merchant seamen. Last week's episode was about a swindle perpetrated by identical twins, full of the lowest-level puerilitics —it might have been a receptacle for everything thrown out by Bootsie and Snudge.
Previous page
