Television
Bless 'em All
By MORDECAI RICHLER
would do what the ordinary viewer, bless him, does—just watch it.' Roy Thomson has sub- mitted to an interview with John Freeman. Sid- ney Bernstein has challenged Hugh Carleton Greene to a TV debate, smarting at the hardly outrageous suggestion that the primary function of commercial TV is not public service but pri- vate profit.
Mr. Bernstein has also come up with the en- gaging notion that 'there is no such thing as "old movies." There are a number of films made over the years that the public like to see over again.' (Not, I imagine, The Rats of Tobruk or The Hostage, with Ron Randell and Mary Parker.) All the same, what I miss most on British tele- vision is a choice of good movies. In America, among other wonders (our Sunday newspapers have had colour supplements for years) there is a daily choice of from four to six movies. Many of them are recent and a surprising number are good. I miss little else on British television, be- cause much of the other American produce is shown here, even if a year or two late. In recent weeks I've been able to catch up on many of the plays (Playdate) and variety (Parade) that I missed in Canada last year.
But not all the Canadian plays seen here lately are strike-breaking re-runs. One has been given a new production by the BBC. I suppose that, by this time, most viewers are familiar with the story of Flight Into Danger—how most of the crew and passengers on a Canadian airliner come down with food poisoning and a man who hasn't flown for fifteen years must try to bring the plane in ('Gee, I'm nervous'). Production and acting were run-of-the-mill; but, to be fair, what are actors to make of this kind of dialogue:
STEWARDESS (reading speedometer tensely): 120 . . . 115 . . . 110 . . 110 . . . 115 . . . 120!
PILOT: This is it!
If the play is supposed to make for a sus- penseful hour, it even fails there. Surely only the most inexperienced viewer would ever expect that Unnamed Brand to wash whiter, or Hughie Green to be really rude to a contestant, or that a plane filled with so many nice people would not land safely. As Sir Robert says. Television's a picture. Watch it and bless you.
Last week 1 also watched This Is Your Life. Eamonn Andrews, who is, my candidate for the most unlovable man in a highly com- petitive field, dipped once more into the bathos- bucket and came up with one Tom Evans, a British POW who survived the atom-bomb raid on Nagasaki. It appears that Mr. Evans, though hospitalised for a time and, I gather, still suffer- ing after-effects, won a large cash prize sonic years after his return to England in a national- newspaper contest ('The Luckiest Moment of my Life'); and so last week his wife was able to tell us smilingly (Eamonn says everything smilingly) that it's thanks to the atom bomb that they now own a delightful pub in historic Wind- sor. Certainly no living satirist could improve on this. Yet This Is Your Life remains compulsively viewable. I confess I find it and other blatantly
Peter Forster is on holiday
tasteless shows more fun than most of the serious ones. Take Tempo, for instac.ce. Honestly done, well meant though it is, it usually drags. Here is one case where the director cannot say after- wards that the best shots have been left on the cutting-room floor: The trouble with most of the Tempos I have seen is that nothing seems to have been left on the cutting-room floor.
Two of the most enjoyable shows last week were documentaries, both on ATV. South America, freshly produced by James Bredin, with an informative, intelligent script by James Morris, was a mode! of its kind Freedom of Speech (producer, Christopher Morahan; writer and narrator, Bamber Gascoigne) was tastefully done, though it offered no surprises.
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