Television
More's the pity
Martyn Harris
Television dramas begin to flag on their third series. Writers get bored, plots are recycled, actors coast on their characters. Love Hurts (BBC1, Friday, 9.30 p.m.) began as competent hokum, based on the old odd-couple format of rough bloke and posh bint. Frank. Carver (a creakily fiction- al name) was the plumber turned entrepreneur (the rough bloke must have money). Tessa Wyatt (even creakier) was the power-dressing, go-getting merchant banker he falls for — though she rapidly has her edges softened with a transfer to the charitable Baumblatt Foundation, which gives money to attractive and deserv- ing people in Eastern Europe. She had a friend who was a woman rabbi in the sec- ond series, for no reason I could ever fath- om, while Frank still has a prat-falling, working-class mate called Max.
The whole thing was held together for two series by the will-they-won't-they-get- married suspense, and the likable personal- ities of Adam Faith and Zoe Wanamaker. Now they are married, and with a baby, it is difficult to see the point of the programme, apart from providing travel opportunities for the cast, who this week were off to Israel on a kind of promotional film for the Israeli wine industry. Frank wanted to cor- ner the trade in cheap plonk, and Tessa the market in Ethiopian refugees. A nympho- maniac Polish woman pursued Max while Frank discovered a hidden hoard of price- less wine. . . . Continued next week, more's the pity.
As for Minder (ITV, Thursday, 8.30 p.m.) — is this the sixth series or the seventh? I am sure I saw Minder On The Orient Express a few years ago at Christmas, which is usually the epitaph to a tired series. And doesn't Leeds Liquid Gold now have sole copyright on the Arthur Daley persona and all profits accruing thereto? Seems not, for this week Arthur was selling a dodgy motor to a nun and then getting into a panic as all his other schemes went astray. Was God mocked? The video machines for the local Mafiosi got lost. The Jacuzzis for the Swedish health club produced only feeble farts. You want cliches? We got 'em.
The new bloke, who-isn't-Denis-Water- man, fixed the car with the help of a pretty nun, while Arthur confessed his sins to the priest: 'Not that I'm actually a left-footer or nothing' — the only line which raised a smile. The point of Minder, as I remember, was that Arthur took advantage of Terry, who was nice but dim, but always got off with the girl and always got to punch the villain's face. Now, it seems, the new bloke who-isn't-Denis-Waterman is smarter than Arthur, he doesn't punch people's faces and doesn't get off with the nun. We are left only with serious series fatigue.
Panorama (BBC1, Monday, 9.30 p.m.) was picking up after the Birt blitz, but this week's was a real dud, even though fronted by the lovely Francine Stock. 'Panorama asks: Are children paying too high a price for our freedom?' she urgently intoned. This was prologue to a piece of half-baked research on the effect of divorce on 152 children (a negligible sample in terms of serious social science) by some grant-grab- bing academics from Exeter University, who had been smart enough to anticipate the latest government cost-cutting exercise. Sorry, that should read 'serious concern over eroding family values'.
Children of 're-ordered' families showed 'lower self esteem', more 'psychosomatic ailments', and they had more problems at school. How we reeled in the multiply re- ordered Harris household. We didn't hear if the findings were controlled for income and social class — the most powerful deter- minants of both divorce and children's wel- fare. We heard but the barest mention of the 1958 National Childhood Development Study of 17,000 children, which made exactly the opposite finding. It was tenden- tious tosh which didn't deserve three min- utes on South East At Six, much less a flagship current affairs programme, albeit an exhausted one — but I begin to feel I am repeating myself.
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