Television
Real people
Richard Ingrams
Nearing the end of my long stint as the Spectator's television critic I find rather to my amazement that there are at least three programmes currently on the box which I am enjoying almost without reservation. They are The Fraggles (ITV), The Living Planet (BBC) and The Jewel in the Crown (ITV). The surprising member of the trio is the last because when it first started I had quite a few doubts about the
Way it was going. The series broke all the ales 1, }T killing off the heroine of the first by episodes and banishing her lover to
PtPrison where he has scarcely been seen However, after a difficult time establishing a new heroine in the person of Sarah Layton (Geraldine James) it has all got going again. On Sunday the Did You 3)". • ? bores, who included the novelist M. M. Kaye, spent a lot of time discussing
had Politics of the story and whether they nad. been faithfully rendered in the TV series, , but I think the point is irrelevant. fltlY story stands or falls on the strength of its
,s characters and it is here that Jewel in the Crown succeeds. Almost everyone in the story is a _eal__,
person, rather than a TV stereotype, This may be mainly thanks to Paul Scott's writing but there is also a lot of very good acting being done, especially by
tile "men. As the new heroine Geraldine James has a comparatively easy job, but J1-1.4 Parfitt as the mother, Wendy Morgan (sister) and Rosemary Leach (Aunt Fenny) are all excellent in their different ways. I Teddy also sorry to see the end of poor old teddy (Nicholas Farrell) who was blown to Pieces in the last episode. I have seldom seen such a silly-ass army officer who was ,evertheless a likeable human figure. M. M. objected on Did You See... ? to Tim tiggot-Smith's portrayal of Ronald Mer- rick, saying that Paul Scott had not intend- ed him to be so altogether unsympathetic but personally I have taken quite a shine to old Merrick, again a three-dimensional character who is not at all the convention- al baddy that some people think he is. However when all's said and done the test of a series like this is whether you want to watch the next episode and it is a fact that I now look forward keenly to Tuesday even- ings and look forward even more to the day when I can watch it without clutching a notebook and pencil.
A new horror was launched on BBC last week in the shape of The Other Half, a series devoted to the little-known husbands of well-known women. Perhaps it would have been off to a better start if the subject had been someone other than Derek Rayner, wife of the notorious and ubiquitous Agony Aunt, Claire. Mrs Rayner's image is that of a fat, jolly, cuddly ex-nurse who can be relied upon for a commonsense, down to earth approach to thorny subjects like sex, but I have always seen her myself as a monstrous and rather frightening figure of the type one would not much want to meet on a dark night. Certainly her husband, an ex-actor named Derek, evinced a crushed and rather woebegone expression and had the decency to look embarrassed as Claire confided to the millions of viewers how they always slept in a double bed and how Derek has been known to ring her up during the afternoon to make 'certain suggestions' and even sometimes to get his own way with regard to this one. The sight of Mrs Rayner being beaten into shape by beauticians and masseuses was altogether too much and I went off to have my bath.
It looks as if Mr Selwyn Gummer is mak- ing a mistake complaining about the recent Panorama on neo-fascism in the Conser- vative Party. Whatever its faults the pro- gramme, like all Michael Cockerell's ef- forts, was at least quite interesting and perfectly justifiable in political terms. To the public it will look as if Gummer has a personal axe to grind as he himself made a pathetic impression in his interview with Fred Emery at the end of the programme,
refusing to answer the questions and merely reiterating some irrelevant facts about the Labour Party and Militant Tendency. To describe the programme, as Gummer did at the weekend, as 'quite and utterly beyond democratic politics' suggests that he is as illiterate as he is pompous and conceited.
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