Television
Pull-Up for Car Men
By PETER FORSTER
NOT the least memorable moment last week came in one of Jack Hylton's new Rosalina Neri half-hours (A-R). Our blonde, Italian wimple-with-a- dimple, was singing of autumn leaves in front of an outsize wooden frame shaped in the letters RN, from which autumn leaves duly fluttered down. Miss Neri is never a girl to hide her assets, and lo, a leaf hovered and hesitated and then alighted upon the convenient ledge of her corsage; but Miss Neri sang on. A moment later, possibly because the leaf weighed as much as the last straw, her shoulder-strap slipped down: Miss Neri sang on, and her expression changed no more than in any of her previous songs. Such nonchalance can rarely have been seen on tele- vision, and it only goes to show that if you give somebody a series often enough something enter- taining may eventually happen.
Her show, it must be admitted, usually amounts to very little, and as such it naturally goes out at a Peak hour. On the other hand, a certain amount of blether is written about peak-hour planning. Tele- vision bosses seldom if ever take notice of tele- Vision critics, but they can sleep all the sounder When as Much of the firing is wide of the mark as on this subject. It surely stands to sense and reason that the evening hours, when the majority look in, shall be dominated by shows with majority appeal. To complain, for example, that offerings such as Granada's Searchlight are not put on as regular mid-evening features is really too much like urging the shopkeeper to sell at a loss. Obviously the popular must pay for the minority, itild I would not have thought that the country's Intelligence was utterly soporific by ten or even eleven o'clock in the evening. Indeed, it might well he that the higher IQ audience goes out for the evening and returns in time to see something Worth-while, instead of huddling over the set for four hours nightly as a matter of course. The Worthless : worthwhile ratio could bear adjust- Mem, but all the networks are prepared to accept 411 occasional stumble in the race for ratings by hutting on a minority show at a peak hour. At lowest, loss of audience is chargeable-to prestige.
The real charge against present peak-hour plan- ting, mostly with 1TV, is not the nature of the Programmes but the quality—the abysmal stuff like Tell It to the Marines, Johnny Staccato, Spot the Tune, Juke Box Jury, The Third Man and a dozen others, not to mention the excessive num- ber of re-showings ATV are getting away with in London at weekends. A feature of the present season is the introduction of hour-long serials (self-contained episodes with the same central figures) on the three mid-week evenings. I think the press reception of Knight Errant (Granada, Tuesdays) has been unduly fierce. A-R's Proba- tion Officer and the Detective-Superintendent Lockhart hours are both about crime in a sordid-, realist vein; Granada at least plumped for the light comedy-thriller without extraneous violence. That little tune at the beginning presumably strikes the note aimed at—it is the sort of gay, shimmering, string-orchestration that used to back up credits for Hollywood comedy-thrillers of the Thirties, and I dare say with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy to the fore we would all be applaud- ing the lightness of touch here, but John Turner and Kay Callard, as the Bulldog Templar-type and his Girl Friday, are much too doughy. It is only fair to note that both this and the Lockhart series are allowed rather less than half the re- hearsal time allotted to a normal drama produc- tion.
Also serial-writers might ponder the remarks by a veteran of American TV and radio scripts, quoted in Time's current fascinating feature on American TV's 'private eyes' : 'In radio you could always use a narrator to tie up the loose ends. I could cover any hour TV show today in one half-hour of radio with the use of narration. The hour TV show has room only for a half-hour of ideas.' Lockhart gains pace when narration is used, and the same device helps ITV's new Thurs- day Western, The Deputy, which also has the immeasurable advantage of Henry Fonda as star, the first film actor of top quality to come over to TV's genus, Wells Farrago.
Again on technique, I think any regular TV speaker must have learned from watching Ed Murrow's 'Granada Lecture' on 'Television and Politics.' In the Guildhall, from a distance where 1 sat, he came over rather prosy and sonorously unvaried. In the studio, seen close to, using film illustrations, this was masterly. I still think it should be possible to get closer to evaluating the effectiveness of TV propaganda techniques (as against examining them); but when it came to his comments on our own election telecasts from a technical point of view, one had a chastening sense of hearing an incomparable professional on his subject, about which amateurs have been pontifi- cating, not least myself. No wonder that, apart from being the most honourable television re- porter in America, this is the best man at his kind ot job in the world.
The other face of the week clearly belonged to Carl Jung, whom John Freeman did his best to psychoanalyse in Face to Face (BBC). Asked if he believed in God, Jung replied after a long pause: 'I know. I don't need to believe. I know.' A good Roman Catholic response, some might say: but is Jung a Catholic? A brief, preliminary summary of Jung's career and beliefs might well have helped viewers like myself whose knowledge of both is very sketchy. Too often the BBC loses viewers because it assumes knowledge; this fascinating interview, for exampfe, was all the more rewarding to follow once in possession of minimal information which it would have been simple to supply.
For the rest, ITV has been a pull-up for car men. Oh, for a phonetic print that could convey the way these car salesmen and motoring corre- spondents drawl 'motor caaaar.' One evening both networks even contrived to be on about the Motor Show at the same time, and for days the switch inevitably turned on a car and one of those bland experts who always seem to be strangled by the old school ties of schools they never went to. I was left bemused by so many bold new lines ('rather a unique innovation here, I think'), and two-litre jobs with independent suspension (`The US calls a boot a trunk, as you know'), and the squared-up block which was a refinement on the old version ('somebody breathed on it a bit, as they say'), and the 18 per cent. more glass area Cone of my own personal particular favourites') and the handy carriage ('just what the women have always wanted') in its large, small, de luxe, mini- Or monstrous model. There are more cars than are dreamed of in your world, Horatio, But what possible use could anybody have thought last year's models, which lacked all these improve- ments?
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