Television
Character parts
Richard Ingrams
The sad news this week is that there are going to be no more Muppet shows, The inspired creators have decided, perhaps rightly, that they have done enough. The only good thing about this is that it could spell the end of Lord Grade's ATV. But with the demise of Basil Brush it means that as far as the rest of us are concerned there is now nothing worth watching on the telly. Meanwhile, the scarecrow Worzel Gummidge who may be seen on ITV at five o'clock on Saturday has now been widely accepted as a caricature of Michael Foot, leader of the Labour Party. Hitherto I had not seen the real Worzel as played by Jon Pertwee but made good the omission last weekend. He is a touching and pathetic figure with a pointed nose, straw hair and ragged clothes. So far, so good. On Saturday he had decided to go to the village `jumbly sale' to buy himself a new suit — obviously a reference to the recent Donkey Jacket at the Cenotaph affair. Later in the story poor Worzel became very depressed and decided that he was a complete failure and asked permission of his superior, a kind of Lord of the Scarecrows figure, if he could be thrown on to the compost heap — 'There doesn't seem much for old Worzel to go on for', he tearfully lamented. I was very taken by Mr Pertwee's performance and also that of Una Stubbs, better known to me as Alf Garnett's daughter, who plays his haughty inamorata — perhaps a symbol of Britannia, if the political analogy is to be pressed.
The BBC's adaptation of Great Expectations is not up to the standard of recent Dickens serials. There is a difficulty with this story in that it has been so well done before by David Lean, and those of us who remember his film will never find anything else half so good. Two ingredients are vital for a successful Dickens adaptation — physical atmosphere, and strong character acting. The BBC, which squanders all our money on vulgar tat like The Borgias, is unable to afford the provision of decent sets for Great Expectations so there is no feeling at all of old London — usually the most powerful character in anY Dickens story. Of the cast only Colin Jeavons as Wemmick and Derek Francis as Jaggers are 'Dickensian' in the best kind of way. Gerry Sundquist as Pip looks disconcertingly like Mike Yarwood and Stratford Johns as Magwitch lacks dignity.
Anyone who thinks that there aren't any Dickensian eccentrics left should have watched The Englishwoman and the Horse, (BBC2) featuring a number of women from all walks of life who are besotted by horses. Not that they were all necessarily eccentric. There was a policewoman from Blackburn who seemed the epitome of common sense as she moved confidently among skinhead soccer fans asking them to 'move along'. But the rest of them were 'characters' of the type you don't see enough of on the telly — Mrs Poulter, for example, a woman who collects horses like some people collect stamps and who has to take on more and more cleaning jobs in order to afford their upkeep. Why women should feel this way about horses was not analysed by the producer, Edward Mirzoeff, or his narrator, Candida Lycett Green, which was perhaps just as well. In fact both of them kept very much in the background and allowed their 'characters' to talk about themselves.
The ITN strike has meant that we have been forced to watch John Humphrys on the BBC, there being no alternative. You would have thought that the Independent companies could provide some kind of news service during the strike even if it was only a man reading bits out of the evening paper. Instead it is an all-or-nothing situation. I note that John Humphrys has managed after several weeks to control his wrist-twitching, but otherwise he remains as inadequate and inappropriate as ever.
Previous page
