Television
Dramatics
Richard Ingrams
I keep waiting for signs of the election to make themselves felt on the screen but, to date, it seems to have been something of a Phoney War. Partly this is due to the reluctance of politicians to come on the telly, and here. I think Mrs Thatcher may have made her first big mistake by turning down the Weekend World of a debate with Uncle Jim. Everything I have seen suggests that the Tory leader positively shines in the presence of Brian Walden. There is something about the little fellow which brings out the best in her, besides which, it seems to me. Walden himself is in a way curiously attracted to the Iron Lady.
If politicians have grown weary about the box, old Auntie BBC has got her knickers in a rare old twist. Last week, for example, on the News Quiz, the amusing little divertissement on Radio 4 which I occasionally patronise, there was not a single reference to the election, while on television some Grey Man in his wisdom had decided that it would not be safe to show a repeat of a Mike Yarwood interview with Janet Brown disguised as Mrs Thatcher. I was surprised in the circumstances that Spike Milligan's new programme Q8 (BBC2) was allowed to go out on the air. It did so, I need hardly say, unheralded by the kind of ridiculous brouha-ha which preceded the latest Fawhy Towers series, although it's far, far funnier. This is because Milligan. unlike Cleese, makes jokes about good healthy things like policemen, false noses, underpants and women with large bosoms.
The reasons for the poor quality of most televison plays became apparent to me on Sunday when The South Bank Show (LWT) devoted an hour to serious analysis of the state of television drama. Prominently featured was the inventor of the BBC Wednesday Play. Mr Sidney Newman. a tremendously earnest Canadian with a moustache. He it was, we were told, who had dragged television plays kicking and screaming out of the drawing room and into the kitchen sink where they belong. But the scenes from Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home now look just as ridiculously dated as the West End comedies they were meant to replace. Newman gave the game away when he said that his main aim was to get a big audience; in other words he was just as commercial in his approach as any of the theatrical impresarios whom people like his protégé, Ken Trodd, despise. On the whole the story of television drama is a fairly dismal one. Looking back at all the tele plays I have seen (about three — Ed.) I cannot think of a single one which I would like to see again.
I have received an interesting letter from Julian Jebb who recently interviewed Dame Edna Everage on Arena (BBC2). 'You wondered', he writes, 'what was the picture that made the Dame's face contort with emotion before she riffled on. It was a photograph taken in Melbourne, I think about four years ago, when she was having such a disturbing time with her husband Norman. It had been maliciously reported that Norman had formed a liaison with a well endowed masseuse. She clearly found memories of that fearless investigative probe, during which she met and was photographed with the hussy in question, still too painful.'
I am glad the mystery has been solved.
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