Television
The Great Educator
By CLIFFORD HANLEY IT'S probably just as well that television can only occasionally light on moments of total reality. Our nervous systems would fly apart if they were exposed too often to pro- become compulsive truants; 1 can almost per- suade myself that I first started reading the case-histories in a library book on the banks of the Monkland Canal one afternoon when I was playing truant. But the living individuals had me knotted and pop-eyed. There was the plump girl who had developed toilet trouble to the point where she was incapable of leaving her home; and the fat boy who had weak ankles and sometimes collapsed in a heap at football; and the thin little boy who had discovered that his Mum was in fact his Gran.
What made the programme throb was that all three patients (or delinquents? they had to be brought to court before expert help was brought to them) were fairly luminous with intelligence and good intention. Prodded with infinite patience by the court psychologist, they groped for words and self-understanding, and sternly controlled the panic and imminent tears.
Frankly, I wasn't too far from tears myself.
The whole exercise was almost unbearably mov- ing. I wonder how many parents and school- teachers felt the same? And I wonder how many of us, when we come across a similar situation in real life, will go right on telling the damned brat to pull itself together, and adding a clout for emphasis? That was the most horrifying idea I retained after this splendid programme: the imprisonment of children in an adult world which is also an exasperated emotional mess.
Effusive thanks also to the BBC for the docu- mentary film Our School, an absolute cracker with a dozen moments of sheer delight, includ- ing one in which a (Scottish) English teacher blew his top over his (English) pupils' obsession with 'posh accents.' This has always baffled me too. If we get a United States of Europe, will solemn English codgers have to teach them- selves to identify the Right Type of Frenchman by the way he pronounces merde?
The bouquet of camphor surrounded much of drama and film. 1 for one don't mind revivals; television can perform a useful func- tion as a live reference library of plays and movies. For instance, I had never seen Hitch- cock's The Paradine Case until the weekend. I was amazed. I have come to accept as an article of faith that Hitchcock never made a picture that was less than interesting. But oh, brother. This one has all the gloss, the interesting furni- ture, the shining personalities, and not the faintest tremor of suspense. Not a tremor of life or character, either. Was Gregory Peck really as bad an actor as that? Did this film seem good at the time? Television is a great educator.
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