Television
Withered daffodils
Martyn Harris
Tony Hancock wrote his own memorial on a radio episode of Hancock's Half Hour in 1964: 'The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam-jar and a rough-hewn stone bearing the legend, "He came and he went": Except of course that it was Galton and Simpson who wrote the lines and not Hancock. The comic genius who carried a Bertrand Russell paperback in his mac pocket and aspired to become a proper intellectual like John Freeman could not be trusted with his own epitaph. Galton and Simpson made Hancock and by sacking them he committed a classic act of hubris, leading inevitably to his self-destruction.
Such at least was the plodding thesis of Hancock (BBC 1, 9.25 p.m., Sunday) and a very tedious two hours of viewing it made. It was the history of Hancock according to Freddy, his second wife, and marred by obvious suppressions. Where was Cicely, his first wife, and wasn't it at least notewor- thy that Hancock's decline coincided with the break-up of that marriage? Where was the affair with Joan Le Mesurier, who over- lapped with Freddy by two years? Where were the other writers like Muir and Nor- den who had helped make Hancock a star before he even met Galion and Simpson?
The trouble with Freddy as posthumous critic is that she was a PR woman, and PR people always want you to keep selling the thing that sold last time. In fact Hancock was right to insist on dropping co-stars like Sid James and props like the homburg. He was probably right to drop Galton and Simpson, who were more interested in sit- coms like Steptoe and The Likely Lads, while Hancock headed for the stratosphere of pure comedy where Chaplin and Keaton dwell and which is all to do with the exploitation of embarrassment. It was the bottle which did for Hancock — not hubris.
Alfred Molina produced a fine imperson- ation of The Lad, though you couldn't real- ly say it was acting, because he had no lines to act with. As Joe Orton's lover in Prick Up Your Ears, Molina had the benefit of a crackling Alan Bennett script, but here, ironically enough, the only dialogue which sang was stuff like 'The Blood Donor', bor- rowed straight from Galton and Simpson. As a memorial these were withered daf- fodils in a cracked jam-jar, and Tony Han- cock deserves a lot better.
All the same it meant I did watch Trainer (8.15 p.m., Sunday), the new BBC 1 horse- opera, which is by Howard's Way out of Tri- angle and remotely descended from The Brothers. The formula, as with Howard's Way, is to take an expensive pastime (boat- racing/horse-racing) with a high middle- class participation and to provide a 'behind the scenes' drama (boat yard/stable yard) spiced with knowledgeable language, sex, booze and the pretty scenery of the Solent and South Downs respectively.
The chief pretence, as with real-life horse-racing, is that people are involved in it because they like horses, rather than because they like status, money and swank- ing about in tight clothes. Thus the baddies an arrrgghh in the month!' 'There's like Hugo Latimer (Patrick Ryecart) spend all their time in bed and in casinos, while the goodies like Mike Hardy (Mark Green- street) enjoy mucking out stables and lean- ing on fences. I know nothing about horse-racing and care less, so I sat baffled through scenes where men in flat caps leaned on fences to watch identical brown ' horses run past and talked to each other from the corners of their mouths: 'Happy Brave is a fine prospect,' said Hat One.
'But he's set to give ten pounds to Black Deed,' said Hat Two.
'The smart money's with us,' said Hat One.
'But he'll have to hold on to the two- furlong marker.'
'Seen enough?' said Hat One.
And I rather felt that I had.
Previous page
