I e,ev,sion
The Heart of the Matter
By PETER FORSTER
In the same way, the BBC's Lifeline series offers some worthwhile group therapy. Quite how deep it goes I am not sure—in last week's consideration of the way the subconscious can be manipulated to affect the judgment, for example, there was no suggestion that equally helpful effects might be wrought by drink, but the general lesson was certainly educative. And while, in a moment of benevolence, we are noting that these programmes fulfil part of the particu- lar, proper purpose of the BBC, I might add that it is hard to conceive of ITV putting on that delightful conversation piece between Ustinov and the Tonight team. Those able to negotiate the tricky causeways of the current Radio Times may perhaps have thought to contrast our modern bearded soloist with the Wilde recol- lected in Laurence Housman's tranquillity last Monday in the 'playlet, Echo de Paris (Home Ser- vice), a re-creation based on a meeting with the fallen Lucifer in Paris which more than anything I have ever read or heard gives the flavour of his incomparable talk.
Also to invoke other great men I never saw, the shades of Dan l.eno and Herbert Campbell, pillars of Drury Lane panto half 'a century ago, must be nodding approbation at Granada's series, Bootsie and Snudge. This has two demobilised character actors from the Army Game. Bill Fraser and Alfie Bass, the sergeant-major and the skiver, in a flimsy framework of hotel life. The point of the formula rests upon the basic but not unsubtle insistence that the apparent toughie is soft (Poor dog in a sputnik alone by itself!) while the lesser breed is tough ('It's got fleas!), and the various little dilemmas are worked out with almost disconcerting literacy. Or would you expect t.o find a studio audience howling its head off at references to 'John Yogi Baird'? It almost makes you wonder if there is a studio audience.
But then the abuses of literacy must be turning Mr. Hoggart grey on his Pilkington stint. I had just finished reflecting how well Kenneth Allsop covered the case of the Stevenage teenagers barred from their cinema in Tonight (BBC), when This Week (ITV) came up with the one aspect he missed actual shots of the delinquents in their preferred haunts, wearing the leather jackets and winkle-picker shoes. 'They need something to occupy their minds,' said the inter- viewer Their minds. . . . Lord love us all. It re- mains only to be said that ever since I read in the press that the detergent-versus-Brand X com- mercial was to be withdrawn, I seem to see it every time I turn on. Perhaps the principle is that when something is thought to be wrong, Sir Robert Fraser imposes a time limit upon it. Or perhaps somebody needs a hole-in-the-head operation
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