Television
Not so thrilling
Richard Ingrams
Aan Bennett was accorded a big send./ off by the BBC to launch his series °iv six plays which started last week. Not tnimil did he get the straight-to-camera sP°t -„f Did You See . . ?, he also had a quarter "t an hour, a day or so later, to tell us ah°Lit the delights in store. This was all a gt"...,41 mistake as it built up expectations will-di
were never going to be fulfilled in a rit,,,.; •
of Sundays. Like Harold Pinter, Alan nett began life as a writer of review sked ches. He came to fame as one of the Bey°11_ the Fringe quartet, his contributions coo; sisting of funny sermons and lectures ah°11.. Lawrence of Arabia and Virginia W°° c, Since then he has written a number of suof cessful plays but I have always thought
him as primarily a sketch-writer. on'
Last week's offering, Our Winnie, firmed this view. It was not really a PlaY,er all. Cora went to the cemetery with il, sister, Ida, and her handicapped daughtefs Winnie, to put flowers on her husbanuart grave. In the cemetery were two students, one sketching, the other talcu'',,‘ photographs. As if uncertain what to cfe with his two women, Bennett devoted s°t,P„t time to a council worker doing a surve) os° the bus slop and then the YCni that grid was a pity that Melvyn Bragg's pro- ca'ent', Miss Highsmith was filmed on a re- cent visit to London alongside an actor sItae—inailer. Surely, the interviewer said, her the usual cosy lady thriller-writer with would looks wary and troubled, as you Murderers u an utterly convincing way, so T4Ying the part of her best-known villain, gatnalising glimpses of a police psychiatrist Dogs Bragg, was discussing her book A bic)ret col) who pursues and kills a thbr„-,. Was making a point here about the ph corrupting corrupting effect of serving in the force. vv,rnation of everyone, he was right to go cs:„Ts 'Camp northern playwright talks ‘,";iss Highsmith writes thrillers, which are l'I'ten considered an inferior species of t`lighsinith winning the Booker Prize, even i°uventional kind. She herself is a far cry f;:staken attempt to 'do something dif- testber bogus film of Ripley watching the in- iarview in his hotel bedroom. There were hb 'ling his view of Miss Highsmith's writing beew Years ago when someone, it may have y°g's Ransom which is about a young New st. no, Miss Highsmith replied to the con- eve&cl son-of-a-bitch who deserved got home they started looking at a photo Ol mind may have got a little warped with "his Plays to one of his earlier review sket- CeninlY about his new plays commissioned "Y the Bgc, h Patricia Highsmith was the subject of an rt4°.ur-long South Bank Show on Sunday. Highsmith It would be hard to imagine Miss [7 bright smile and string of pearls. Miss Bregil Ripley. Just as the interview with ragg got interesting, we cut to a bit of rterriember an interview she gave on TV a ref7thing he got. Likewise on Sunday she Die'sed to subscribe to any conventional eastYi es about the sanctity of life. It isn't as album another sketch. The play had Plenty of amusing lines but, like the scenes I Mention, they were amusing in isolation and did not add up to a proper play in which things happen. troduction of the mentally handicapped wr,°Inan, as with the dying man in Intensive isfe, the first play in the series, as it looked ,!Ke an attempt just to spice up an otherwise in which Intensive Care in the same hospital 'n vihich his own father died suggested that Lik as all that, she seemed to be saying. Dore the Olivier interviews, this was an op- Photographer's comic attempts to take pic- tures of the attendants in the Chapel of Remembrance. Then when Cora and Ida "L.? imaginative story. The fact that Bennett .,;HIPlex and fascinating character. In a hough her thrillers are of a quite un- .°111d expect of someone who writes about e.sernblance in Bennett's little lecture about 'oter that man and kill him. He was a dirty, et nothing that really shed much light on 2. intense relationship with her characters. at You feel she really understands how
e nature of the average policeman and It
Meanwhile, I was suspicious of the in- -Ine got nowhere near to explaining her tunhY missed.
think. age. In fact there was a strange
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