Contemporary Arts
Television COMEETITION poked its alien and slightly raffish nose into television just four weeks ago.
Gloomy or optimistic, we all of us, I think, ex • Pected rather too much. Monstrous vulgar-
ity or spectacular improvement, whichever it Was to be, we expected some outlandish differ- ence between pre- and post-commercial days; and all of us with a month of dual watching behind us have now the same faint feeling of deflation, of 'Oh, is that all?" about us. Parallel rather than contrary seems to be CTV's form, imitation rather than protest; and we might, I suppose, have guessed it. The BBC, after all, built up its programmes with, presumably, the greatest jollification of the greatest number in mind; and if parlour games and family serials id the rest are what millions will sit through already, who is CTV to know. better?
So parallel they go, like two trains chuffing dong neighbouring tracks; now one leading. now the other. Competition is an extraordinary catalyst, a hustler, a prodder, an inciter to greater speed and effort and attention; and the mere fact of there being two trains instead of one has startled the BBC into some remark- able spurts. A quite noticeable tightening and sharpening and gingering has been going on at Lime Grove these last weeks: an overdue im- provement, since things had sunk there into an unhappy state of pre-competitive torpor, but Welcome just the same. Then, each scores over the other 'in a particular and personal way. CTV scores because it isn't the BBC, the BBC because it isn't CTV. Each, I mean (in case this sounds all too obvious), is a huge relief from the other. Perhaps only those who were forced, in the old days, to sit through uninterrupted hours of the BBC will really know what I mean : television critics, or the tyrannised rela- tives of television addicts. On CTV you escape the peculiar frowstiness of the BBC, that faint smell of mothballs, those kindly crinkles at the
corners of announcers eyes. On the BBC you escape its opposite, the patter and speed and the interruption of advertisements, the whirl- ing, tinsel atmosphere of something brash and pleased with itself. (Not that I mind the adver- tisements, as entertainment, in the least; but they add to the air of bustle and confusion, and just occasionally, in the middle of a play, you may wearily confound one of the more anthropomorphic pieces with the end of Act I.)
But where the BBC properly scores, as tele- vision proper, is in its immediacy, If it is tele- vision's business to reflect life, to take us into the heart of events as they happen, then the BBC is so far well ahead. Perhaps, as the elder, the more national institution, this is only as it should be. Most of the BBC's programmes are 'live'; they deal with things that are happening now, under our noses, close at hand. We look in as they happen, and they arc produced with a television audience—a particular, because a national, television audience—in mind. Where- as much of CTV's space is occupied with films and rehashes, with things made a long time ago and a long way off, often incorrectly edited for a British audience, occasionally even in- comprehensible. The BBC attitude seems to be that you haye a number of programmes that must somehow be fitted into a certain limited space; CTV seems to start off with its space, and to wonder, rather haphazardly, how to fill it up. Sonic of its 'fillers' are entertaining enough; but they arc hardly television. Some of the BBC's live programmes are atrocious, but they are aiming, at least, in the right direc- tion.
The Russian boxing, this last week, was only typical. The BBC got it, and somehow, you felt, it just would. Because everyone was agog to see anything Russian, it seemed normal that the BBC should be there, as it has always been, to translate the national mood. (ThiS view is strengthened, of course, by the fact that CTV is still a very local affair, spatially speak- ing; that not all viewers are Londoners or southerners or even midlanders.) Will this always be so? Will every public event be grabbed, as it happens, by the BBC, and will CTV in time be relegated to a sort of Light Programme position? This might not, after all. be unsuitable. On one hand, all the high jinks; on the other, the national plums. It seems a more dignified division of labour than exists at present, when each side is trying, with quite febrile energy, to out-jink the other.
I rather like the idea of the BBC retiring into an elder-statesman position. I rather like the thought of being able to choose, more deliberately than is at present possible, one's viewing mood for a session. If CTV were always and frankly lighthearted, no one would quibble at the advertisements, wherever they interjected. If the BBC had a monopoly of the more serious programmes, no advertisements would bob up (as it seems people's prophetic nightmare they will) between the movements of a symphony or the acts of Hamlet. Myself, I don't shudder at the sight of a washing pow- der or a petrol pump, wherever it appears; but there :ire those that du. For them, but still more for the two straining, struggling com- petitors and the quality of their results on television, 1 suggest, in an amateur and modest way, some sort of division of subject, range, and atmosphere. Even after a month there are signs of it: may they heave and grow and take effect.
ISABEL QUIGLY
Previous page
