Television
The week that never was
By CLIFFORD HANLEY
THE BBC's Saturday night satire deserves to be taken seriously, and it must be said at once that it has made a. fine acid beginning. An entire hour of irreverence may have seemed a little long during some stretches, and it's going to make life hard for the writers, but life ought to be hard for writers; and this amount of elbow- room means that individual items can be properly explored. The first showing of That Was the Week That Was had some simple joys that ought to be lasting pleasures. Nobody else, for instance, has thought of the almost banal gim- mick of having high-falutin sayings of the week delivered dead straight, but in the wrong accents. It's hysterical.
The cast, led by David Frost, is pretty well perfect, and Millicent Martin is a delight no matter how you take her. There were occasions when the slickness of production faltered, but this doesn't seem to be a fault in a show that must be thrown together in a hurry if it's going to work at all. Michael Gough, for instance, dried up momentarily during a lengthy stint of pour-
ing boiling oil on British holiday resorts, and simply consulted his notes and resumed. Floe'
I was completely won by the party political broadcast of the Servicemen's group. Good bard stuff, this—especially the shadow Secretary of Commonwealth Relations, who was prepared to go out to the nig-nog countries personally and chat up the blackies just like it was man to man.
The studio audience? I don't see why tot' They help to populate the place, and they don't laugh automatically. If I pause to nark at some elements in the programme (and that's my excuse for being here, isn't it?) it's only because they look like becoming regular items. David Frost took Norrie Paramor to the cleaners in a kind of This Is Your Death piece. But though the Prim ciple of this is okay—if public figures are ridiculous, let's guffaw by all means—the attack must be sharp and creative. It isn't enough simply to recite a catalogue of their follies, which sounds merely disgruntled if it goes on too In Then there was the appearance of Bernard Levin, sorting out the public relations officers, a mob of whom were assembled in the studio to be publicly flayed and then retaliate. Well, it's legitimate to flay PROs. We all do it (disapproval of PROs is in danger of becoming a religious dogma, in fact). And Mr. Levin is, of course, 3, very bright chap. But he rapidly undermine', the entertainment with two curious pieces °` judgment. In the first place, since he loathes the East German Government, reasonably enough' he erected the principle that it's particularly im- moral for anybody to put the case of anY onta which is on Levin's Index. In the second Place' he talked too long, and then refused to let the PR types answer. They included a few ripe nits, by the way, but some of them were obviously sane, reasonable and capable of saying some' thing if Mr. Levin hadn't smothered them the moment they opened their mouths. The Levin technique, in fact, is just askinf to be satirised. But most ailments can be cured' and I wish good health to TWTWTW.
Previous page
