irel eViSi.011
Up and Down
By PETER FORSTER
FINDING myself last weekend in Dieppe (by far the best southerly seaside resort served direct by British Railways) I sought out a television set in the course of duty—and. came in where I left off at home, with the Olympics, and all those People swimming up and down. Most, I thought, were men.
Next morning I myself swam in the Channel. Wandering whether the best way o to avoid the the might not be to enter for them, on
we same principle that Henry James once sought an apartment on the Eiffel Tower, as the the Place in Paris from which he need not see h e Eiffel Tower. That evening I tried the set again: they were still swimming up and down in Rome.
Next afternoon I essayed archery, thus prov- ing at least that 'Tir de l'Arc' is not simply listed as a dare among Dieppe's tourist attrac-
tions is by the Syndicat d'lnitiative—and in fact it ls a very technical business indeed nowadays, What with fibre-glass bows and range-finders. (I suggest the next Robin Hood series gets itself a new technical adviser, and I know a most amiable .cr°sx-eyed archery instructor just across the
water who would oblige.) But when I returned to the small screen: as before.
Really, who decided that all anyone cares about at the present time is the Olympic Games? I don't begrudge Mr. Dimmock his Roman holiday, and of course there is an audience for athletics—though what with the pulling up-and- down of flags, and incessant national anthems, the proceedings might often have been taken for a brass-band contest. But if we the audience have to be entered for a BBC marathon, could we not be spared the BBC's Commentator's Voice—hortatory, jocose, admonitory, bland and fatuous by quick turns? (Derek Hart mimicked it nicely in the first new Tonight, to which welcome back.) I have nothing against lady canoeists, for instance, as such, but with the best will in the world it is hard to wax enthusiastic when the CV tells us that 'Britain's only woman canoeist doesn't expect a Gold Medal, but here in Rome she's shown the touch that lifts her into world class,' because `she's training with the world's top kayakists.'
The other French television I saw looked depressingly, or gratifyingly, similar to our own; according to how you judge it, what with a woman announcer like a hairdresser, a news- caster like Robert Dougall, and another instal- ment of Armand and Michaela Denis. Tiny improvements which might be copied are the weather bulletins using dramatic visual devices, angry little rainclouds and fierce winds crossing the map (instead of our verbal briefings in the RAF manner), and the simple use of a pencil to point out places on a map in close-up.
French television, of course, is without corn- mercials, unlike our own rival networks—and if you quibble with that implication, I would like to know what the BBC's televised scenes from The Brides of March were, if not a com- mercial for the play at the St. Martin's. As a theatre offering it drew scathing notices, yet forty-five minutes of peak-hour time were found at short notice for these excerpts.
When this BBC habit of bolstering up stinkers is mentioned, the line taken for the defence is usually that sometimes the effect is to subsidise the worthwhile and struggling minority offering,
as witness Look Back In Anger. Four years on from the appearance of Mr. Osborne's play the argument begins to grow decidedly thin. The BBC seems far too much of a pushover for managements seeking to aid an ailing box-office. It is nonsense• to pretend that the glamour of the West End theatre is conveyed, because the most successful shows are obviously not televised (imagine Tennents, for all their ATV connec- tions, showing Ross or My Fair Lady) and the Corporation does no service, either to the theatre or itself, by showing the poor stun.
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