Television
Best dressed
Wendy Cope
At this time of year there is a great At to be said for being a television critic. The onset of the nasty weather coincided, in inY case, with the beginning of a dreadful cold. It has been absolute bliss to staY indoors, wrapped up in a blanket, cn,, nscientiously watching the box. If the Spectator will send a snow-plough to fetch a4 Copy, I may be able to avoid going nYWhere for another week. f Since Christmas several of my old aynurites have returned to the screen. I ()Y Bergerac (BBC1) for the sunshine, t°'
scenery, John Nettles's good looks, and
1: the plots. This week's episode starred nehael Gambon (I believe he did rather well in something else recently) as a inputer expert whose wife was trying .to anliAl him. Robert Holmes wrote the script --u it was as is usual with this series, very whodunnits worked out. For me the best television wn°dlinnits are those where you get the .Whole wy–. in one episode. I decided not .,"3 bother with Sunday's Miss Marple when i realised it wasp as the first half of a two- tarter. When they serialise P. D. James, I watch the first instalment and then buy the to 01( — there is no question of being able
wait six weeks to find out the solution.
Cagney and Lacey (BBC1) is also high on my list of favourite programmes. I like the way the series deals with the lives of working women and, even more, I like Cagney's clothes. The clothes in Dallas and Dynasty have a kind of horrible fascination but I rarely see anything that would be of much use to me. Some of Cagney's jum- pers and jackets would do very nicely. And I would give a lot for a shiny white nightshirt like the one we saw her in the Saturday before last. Especially if it hap- pened to be machine-washable.
I wish there were more television pro- grammes about clothes. Although I never got around to reviewing The Clothes Show (BBC1), I am hoping that it will come back. Sunday's edition of Did You See . .? (BBC2) included a feature and discussion about whether there should be special programmes for women. 'Not make-up and things,' said one young woman in an interview, 'but women's issues.' I, for one, would like programmes about make-up and things and about women's issues, although there is clearly a problem when it comes to defining these. Whatever they are, I am sure I would find them more interesting than the average quiz show, chat show or sitcom. A further problem seems to be that women who work in television feel they are being relegated if they are asked to work on `women's topics' or that — as Fay Weldon put it in Sunday's discussion — `to call something female is to downgrade it'. There is nothing female about World Darts (BBC2) but there have been a few reminders that these days it isn't only women who like to dress up. Several of the contestants looked as if they had put some thought into their choice of short-sleeved shirt. For his first-round match Bobby George wore black, decorated with pink and blue sequins, while Russell Stewart chose a vivid yellow with something embroidered in green on the back — I think it was a map of Australia. In BBC2's International Bridge Club the style is very different — dinner jackets, bow ties, posh voices. I didn't watch the bridge for long because I was afraid I might learn how to play it. My father warned me against this long ago on the grounds that people who do so become very boring and never think about anything else. Where darts are con- cerned, however, I am afraid I may be hooked for the duration of the cham- pionship. Finally a word about the best thing I've seen during my hibernation. It was Robin Chapman's play Blunt (BBC2), which seemed more or less perfect, especially in its casting. I would love to know if Guy Burgess really announced his departure in a note saying, 'What's become of Waring?' In any case it was a nice touch and it prompted me to take down my dusty collected Browning and read the poem. It is worth looking at, especially if you saw Chapman's play.
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