Television
Learning Sincerity
By PETER FORSTER
WHAT appears to be a mechanical grab fills the screen; then the camera retreats an inch to re- veal, above, twin tunnels in some disembodied tube station, and not until the mechanical grab emits a voice (a rather mechanical voice) do we realise that this is the face in closest close-up of Mr. Andrew Sin- clair, due to conduct us on 'A Television Treasure Hunt' (BBC) for the first draft of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Next we are shown a bag like the one Law- rence lost on Reading Station in 1919, purportedly the size of the original, which since it is so photographed that it seems to come up to Mr. Sinclair's waist, presumably makes him a midget. Indeed, by this time we are beginning to wonder what the producers have against the inoffensive Mr. Sinclair, whoever he is.
Now we are treated to a potted bio- graphy of T. E. Lawrence, with the aid of some old films, plus a commentary in prose dull enough for a Listener reprint and in tones of that .drooping, world- weary manner beloved by wartime COI 'shorts' telling us about our heritage of wild bird life. (If Mr. Sinclair was re- sponsible for this, then I do see what the producers had against him.) 'The smaller man on the right is Lawrence, but that is no reflection on the scale of
his influence' is a fair sample. Then Robert Graves opines that Lawrence himself chucked the MSS into the canal by the station. After this we had a rather unfortunately delivered estimate of the MSS's literary value by a respected critic. Finally (and here, they seem to say, is the miracle of television!) over to the canal, where the cheery Peter West waits while a frogman searches, forty years on, for that missing bag. 'It would have been an exciting and important moment in television history,' says Mr. West wistfully five minutes later. It would indeed. Never mind, in its way it has been a truly classic programme, one for the record and the archives, for the directors' course and producers' con- ference, an anthology of ineptitude, the definitive collection of just about every mistake of conception and execution it is possible to make in that three-patch field of Talks-Features-Documentaries. I wouldn't have missed it for a huge bribe, nor sit through another like it for less.
In particular it exemplified the estab- lished current habit of employing mon- strously enlarged photos of people under discussion. Hardly a Tonight or Pano- rama or This Week goes by without some lifesized interviewer standing framed by a stateman's nostril. It is, I suggest, a regrettable gimmick, and for this reason: television has two opposite effects : it can (as those who watch it least complain most) give star status to some little nobody, but equally it can quite beautifully cut the famous down to size. The prevalent cliché about the camera detecting insincerity is another half-truth; sincerity can be learned, as any performer knows, in a politician's speeches no less than in the pop songs of that brilliant young actor-turned-teen- ager, Anthony Newley. Yet time and again, the camera also giVes an impres- sion in the round of the man who seems one-dimensional in print. Here is Sir John Wolfenden, the admirable chair- man of the Brains Trust, worldly and wise—yet here he is again, another time, the platitudinous, schoolmasterly, lay- preacher of an ITV Epilogue talking down to us about an 'ugly, uncomfort- able-sounding little word called sin.'
In short, television constantly supplies its own safeguard against over-enlarge- ment of personalities by letting us see them, warts and all. It has its own necessary, desirable defence mechanism, sometimes enhancing the banality of Words by the distinction of a face or Urgency of manner, sometimes (as in almost every Party Political Broadcast) Showing faces that belie phrases, like Scrooge reading Santa's script. Of Course a vast amount of television is tripe, and it is only by realising this that one can assess the unique qualities of What remains, but equally it follows that the best approach towards personalities is to let them prove themselves, not to blow them up to twenty times lifesize in advance. Every producer and inter- viewer in television ought to read at least once every month Lamb's essay on 'The Shade of Elliston', and that marvel- lous passage envisaging the great actor- manager being stripped of his props until naked for the voyage across Styx, and then: 'But, bless me, how little you look!'
The true corollary to the sceptical viewer can be found in the Self-Love Club of performers, whose President, the mincing maestro of the Palladium, Bruce Forsyth, is now mercifully on holiday, though David Jacobs and Pete Murray (of Juke Box Jury and elsewhere) still notably represent those who regard the camera as a mirror, regard it often, and find what they see there much to their taste.
The BBC has wandered belatedly into the courts-day-by-day arena, and the re- sult is the best offering in this kind, most- ly because (unlike Granada's The Ver- dict is Yours) it does not start on the basis of trying to present actuality in the guise of a real-life detective story. Also it shows the developing processes of law as a case moves from magistrate's court to Quarter Sessions, and if this genre is to be anything other than an attempt to cash in on the true misery and tragedy of others, it might as well be informative. Excellent script and direction. The BBC have also found a talent in their staff writer Thomas Clarke, whose Nothing Is Forever was art hour-long play compact of television virtues; triangular emotional situation- lbemsahib trying to marry off cashiered Weakling son against pleas of his ex- chorus-girl mistress; sharp social realism lb seaside-town snobbery; action caught corning up to the boil, with neatly cPaced explosions. Gladys Young ttlperb as Mater India, Paul Daneman With exactly the right marshmallow ,quality for the son, Brenda Bruce never better in her sexy-puppy vein.
Clearly the most important event in television recently has been Mr. Carleton Qreene's appointment as Director- Qeneral of the BBC—to his own appar- elIt surprise, though a good many other people in the BBC had long ago worked
it out that if Jacob was to go in time to give his successor a chance to see the forthcoming renewal-of-Charter battle through from beginning to end, Mr. Greene was the strongest candidate among younger seniors, always provided another general wasn't looking for a job. We shall see in du: course whether Mr. Greene will provide that touch, half- buccaneer, half-evangelist, which the Corporation so badly needs. One move might be to announce immediately that on taking up his duties he will move his desk over to Television Centre.
Of ITV there is little to write, because this is the time of year when ITV tends to pull down the blind and show an old American film on it. I see, incidentally, that Mr. Marsland Gander, critic of the Daily Telegraph, has said that criticism of undue American influence on ITV seems to him merely an indirect tribute to 'the zest and dynamism of American show business.' I must remember that when next watching 0.S.S., Sea Hunt, Highway Patrol, Errol Flynn Theatre, Dragnet, Martin Kane, Hawkeye and the rest.
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