Television
Off colour
Richard Ingrams
/There are two main drawbacks to the 1 colour telly. One is blood, the other is food. In the second instalment of The Jewel in the Crown I was moderately sickened by all the blood and the bruises — we were' for once mercifully spared a full scale rape things which would have been almost bearable in black and white. When on top of all that you see during the commercial break a huge and horrible McDonald's hamburger being doused in thick tomato sauce and devoured by a pair of gleaming teeth, nausea cannot be far away.
Another drawback about my new set, which I will try to remedy, is that it is so far incapable of getting Channel 4, so I was not able to see the repeat of The Jewel in the Crown on Sunday and had to watch Did You See...? instead. However I had already seen enough of the Granada marathon to have doubts once again about the wisdom of these very long adaptations. We don't need to be reminded of the great success of Brideshead but it ought to be recalled that it was far, far too long and in parts extremely dull. I am ashamed to say that I have not read Paul Scott's books, but I can't believe they are anything like as good as Waugh. Certainly there were several occasions during the first two episodes where I found myself muttering 'Get on with it.' The settings, the costumes and the cast are all first rate. It just drags a bit. Episode Two included a sadistic beating scene which was overdone and unpleasant (it was here that the colour set did not help matters by emphasising all the bruises and the blood). By Episode Three this week the story began to flounder in a sea of surplus characters. We had got to know three peo- ple quite well by this stage — Daphne Man- ners, her Indian lover, Hari, and the mad policeman, Merrick. But in Tuesday's in- stalment they had all been dispersed. Daphne herself seemed to have died in childbirth (though nothing definite was said to that effect). Hari had disappeared altogether and Merrick came on late in the day having been posted into the army. Most of the hour-long episode consisted of miscellaneous Englishwomen in an assort- ment of colourful hats sitting on verandahs discussing their relatives. It became quite hard to keep track of all these different women, which may be Paul Scott's fault or it may be the producer's, but it doesn't help to have such a rapid changeover in person- nel from episode to episode, or for that matter to kill off your lovely heroine just when she has got going. This was especially unfortunate as she was so well played by Susan Wooldridge. No amount of distinguished old dames like Peggy Ashcroft can make up for her loss.
Who on earth had the bright idea of turn- ing C.P. Snow's now forgotten Strangers and Brothers saga into a TV series? It is one of the world's great unreadable books, humourless, banal, tremendously dull. In a special Omnibus profile shown prior to the opening of the series the BBC tried to pro- mote the late Snow as a great writer and a great man. But it can't be done. A totally humourless and immensely conceited fellow, Snow was a ludicrous figure in almost every way. For that reason I always treasure Malcolm Muggeridge's description of him as 'a tragic clown of our times, stumbling Grock-like down his own phan- tom corridors of power'. His appearance was more than mildly grotesque, as he look- ed exactly like Humpty Dumpty, being fat and jowly. His hero, Lewis Elliot, was the thin man who was struggling to get out of him, and like his creator he is earnest, unat- tractively ambitious and absurd. Strangers and Brothers is a kind of Yes Minister without the jokes, in which a lot of boring men in suits jockey for position. Lewis Elliot emerges out of nothing, with no family or background of any kind, as if Snow was so ashamed of his own that he did not want to refer to it. His girlfriend, Sheila, says things like 'Tell me I'm not in- capable of answering a man's love.' I found it completely unwatchable after about 20 minutes.
So far the only things I like about the col- our are the snow scenes on the news bulletins and of course the Fraggles (ITV). Needless to say, this new series has been largely overlooked by the critics, with the honourable exception of the Daily Mail's Herbert Kretzmer, who penned a paean of praise. Like the Muppets, the Fraggles are just about the right size for the telly, whereas things like The Jewel in the Crown are too big and their impact is diminished as a result.
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