TELEVISION and RADIO MESSRS. Nigel Kneale and Rudolph Cartier, adaptor
and producer respectively of 1984, deserve our congratulations and thanks. Looking over the book again before the Performance on Sunday I was shaking my head in a happily gloomy way over the impossibility of translating this highly verbal little masterpiece into visual terms. By nine o'clock 1 was admiring the technical skill of the adaptation. By half past I was gripped by the action, held in it; and moved. Mr. Learoyd's brilliantly sketched settings were of just the right weight for Mr. Kneale's compressed and, compact version of the heart of the book. Mr. Cartier kept his actors together; Yvonne Mitchell (as Julia) and Andre Morel! (as O'Brien) were partic- ularly effective and so for the most jiart was Peter Cushing whose Winston Smith was a little too neurotic and niggling for me —1 should have preferred a quieter, slower development of the character; and this too, would have achieved a greater depth of contrast with the destructive climax. Donald Pleasence and Leonard Sachs were com- petent in smaller parts.
The BBC has done well to have presented so adult and accomplished a play. lt has done equally well to ignore the shocked and pious screeching of the popular press.
The sporting broadcasts of the past week have made exceptionally good viewing: the Varsity Match; Scotland and Hungary; Wolverhampton Wanderers and Homed. Camera coverage seems to be getting better; but the commentators aren't. The ubiqui- tous Kenneth Wolstenholme tries hard, but his approach lacks the gusty enthusiasm of a Glendenning without achieving the bland- ness of a Grisewood or a Howard Marshall. Here's a field for experiment, I'd have thought. And why can't we have a couple of experts summing up the first half in the interval of an international instead of a picture of heavy seas breaking on rocks? War in The Air has, by its sixth instalment, become a boring piece of mediocrity. Noth- ing can now be expected of it. The voices multiply, mingling their contrived accents with some of the least inspired film editing that has ever been publicly presented. Its dreariness was unhappily matched by the crawling Operation Escort, so tortoise-like a documentary as to make the Dick Bentley programme which followed it, actually seem fast. The only conclusions that can be drawn from this uneven comedy series are first, that Messrs. Muir and Norden should stick to writing and second, that Peter Sellers is a brilliant clown who is growing large enough to merit a programme of his own.
JOHN METCALF
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