Television
We are what We eat
Clive Gammon
Cannibals Lib hasn't got under Way yet but it can only be a matter of time: that's clear from the tone of some.,ot. the thoughtful Pieces which. followed hard on the recent happening near Yellowknife (the German pilot, remember?). The only thing that Secrets, the first of a new series of BBC2 comedies labelled Bloch and Blue Land also " questionable " v Radio -tittles), lacked was an awareness that such a movement would be a necessary stage before the island rt.ace started to feel guilty about wing so reactionary as to lumber on under the burden of such an out-dated taboo as thinking that people aren't for eating.
There were some notable ingredients, if one may use the word. Warren Mitchell for one and for another the writers, Michael Palin and Terry Jones of Monty Python renown. And if it sounds faint praise to say that 90 per cent of it was funny, original and a remarkable step above the ill-written, uninventive stuff we generally see in television drama, then I'm sorry about that, but it has to be said that the unbelief so willingly suspended for most of the time (mine at least) dropped back firmly into position in the last few minutes when the play just slithered over the easy acceptance by the British people of chocolates containing, er, human flesh. Maybe they would, probably they would, but there was a lot of satiric opportunity lost in not saying how. Or not properly. Even if it did give the authors the chance to introduce quickly a super double-entendre: " We're letting people into our Secrets!"
My acquaintanceship is chattering away about Secrets on a scale I haven't noticed since Cathy Come Home, but in case you missed it, and to explain the foregoing, I'd better say a word about the plot. Mr Rose has a smashing new chocolate factory with a production line so fast that it's only a matter of a few hours between the first processing of the bean and the finished confections being delivered at the retail outlet. Unhappily, three men fall into the melangeur. Maybe I haven't spelled that right but it's the vat in which everything is macerated and mixed in the first place. Before anyone can do anything, the particular batch of chocolates goes on sale in Worthing as part of a test launch. And there they go down magnificently. "Meaty!" "Chewy!" is the consumers' verdict. Re-orders are on an unprecedented scale. " Secrets " (the name, I should have said, of the new brand) is set for recordbreaking sales.
But of course they have this problem. They can't go on using people, so they substitute prime steak. Doesn't work — not the same flavour. So — and this is the slithery part — they convince everyone that eating people is right. This, among other things, solves the nation's balance-ofpayments problem.
It isn't the first time that cannibalism (see A Modest Proposal by J. Swift) has been used as a basis for satire but this was pretty bold stuff for the small screen — especially, I suspect, since it was connected with comedy. Secrets wasn't just a nasty idea. The entrepreneur, the media-men, the accountant, were all seen through their slowly-dawning readiness to accept the situation — not so slow in the case of the accountant — and in the end, though sketchily, everyone else was too, A little more discipline to override the tbottOric'y to put in jokes and nearsketches for their own sake, presumably a hangover from Monty
P. and this could have been a very remarkable play indeed.
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