Television
Simple pleasures
Peter Levi
Ihave not been watching a lot of adult television, because I have not been liking it. Panorama (BBC 1) have altered their tactics nowadays and diminished the role of their presenter, but this means that instead of having a presenter with whom one may be infuriated they have a sort of generalised claim to authority. In their film about India they were not courteous to the president and they were superficial about the whole subject. The Gwalior wedding attracted them like flies to a honey-pot, but they had nothing to say about it except that it would have been embarrassing had the president attended it, which he did not. Mr Gandhi treated them with courtesy and friendliness, which they neither deserved nor repaid.
I have been trying to like Hannay (ITV), which is the kind of thing my family think I like, and I like to go along with that. The trouble is that it reveals the false position of a critic, because when I watch it flip- pantly I really do enjoy it, but the minute I try to sit up and pay attention I find faults. I suppose that Buchan was a very compli- cated man; he was the preserved but aborted corpse of a poet buried under the smooth golf-course turf of a successful career. This kind of complication can be sensed at once in his writings, and in one of the versions of The Thirty-Nine Steps it envelops one like a fog. Unfortunately the adaptation by Michael Robson does not manage this peculiar task, in spite of its gleeful enthusiasm. I think in another mood I would have liked it very much.
One of the best programmes at present is Grange Hill (BBC 1), which can generate more enthusiasm and emotion, at least among my friends and acquaintances, than Dallas or the like have ever done. Its disadvantage is that because it is about a school the year ends and pupils leave and new ones arrive. It is sad that Roley has had to leave the school at last. He was the kind of fat, tragic boy we have all known in our lives; it is greatly to be hoped that he will now slim down and get the parts that he deserves, because not even Maggie Smith can have been so good an actor at his age. Among the staff my favourite is Mr Bronson, who has emerged as a funnier gnashing tyrant than any other, and much more convincing than the more liberal members of the staff. This programme has passed its worst and, alas, probably its best, but it is still full of surprises.
In this part of the winter we watch a lot of videos and old films, which swim up to the surface of the grey screen like the ghosts of those who drowned long ago in mid-Atlantic. We use television as some:. thing that relaxes while it entertains, which could not have been said of the old- fashioned dinner party or house party or dance or outdoor sport.
The new kind of television set will show all four channels at once in colour in different corners of the same screen, and if you want to watch two programmes at once for a serious length of time then you watch one on the screen and one on the box at the side, according to my London taxi-driver. He said that this kind of machine cost £1,000, but I would pay many thousands of pounds not to have to have it.
I look forward to television as I look forward to the first drink or to putting my slippers on in the evening, but it must not make too many demands, because it is after all only part of normal life. It is no longer a treat.
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