Television
Inside story
David Rees
Last week's Play for Today ' on BBC-I, Making the Play, obviously posed a tricky challenge to the authors, Terence Brady and Char
lotte Bingham. Written within the convention of the domestic romantic comedy, the action of the play set up a husband-and wife team — who have parted — writing a play they can't finish. The story they can't finish is, of course, the story of their marriage.
In addition, Brady and Bingham are in real life a husband-and-wife team. Given this Chinese box con struction with the tension stemm ing from the fact that the joint authors in the play can't resolve their problems on either the professional or the personal level, it was quite an achievement that the play seemed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. The two principals, James Bolam and Barbara Ferris, dressed in white to project their official roles as detached writer-observers, appeared in the clinical aseptic setting of formica table tops and office typewriters. This smartness was the opposite of their real life, played out in flashback in a some what crumby flat. Different moods, different episodes from the past were indicated by Miss Ferris's instant-change hairstyles, while the conversation cut quickly from sub-Noel Coward to early John Osborne, All this was played for laughs, and it worked. As you may have guessed, there was an inevitable happy ending — in the play. No such luck for the two writers in white, who pack up their past together in their briefcases, and go their separate ways. Yes, the play was trivial, but it was also highly enjoyable, and believe it or not, there was no message. no commitment, and old uncle alienation was away for the night.
A documentary on BBC-1, Great Expectations, looked at the higher education scene, where apparently graduates are heading for hard times. This situation, where a degree is no longer an entrance ticket to a good job, has been building up for some time, and the feature quickly brought out the changing attitudes of big business to graduates. Big corporations no longer recruit graduates qua graduates, but as potentially useful people. Moreover, strange to relate, graduates themselves are not popular with prospective employers, and one businessman remarked that graduates wanted to be students all their lives. The ponderous, overplayed treatment of three case-histories quickly dispelled any sympathy. Moreover, the unspoken assumption of the programme seemed to be that either the government, or the universities, or both, should provide graduates with more vocational training. Surely that can't be right?
There were two interesting
midweek shows on ITV. A Kind of Freedom, HTV, Tuesday, was a straightforward report on the nomads of the fairground business which quickly and efficiently brought out the extraordinary, uprooted life these people lead. On Wednesday, the incomparable. Lord Clark was seen on Westward talking about Romantic versus Classical Art: William Blake. In spite of the obvious limitations of the box in coping with such subject-matter, some of the magic of Blake's paintings came through.
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