Television
Cultured
Richard Ingrams
Credo, the ITV God-slot, has all the faults of the BBC's Everyman programme, about which I wrote last week, that is it tends to think in terms of 'Anything Goes'. Sunday saw the start of a six-part investigation into the 'cult' industry which acts as a powerful magnet for so many young middle-class people nowadays and causes so much subsequent misery both to them and their families. An exposure of the dangers involved would be welcome but unfortunately the opening Credo programme suggested a pussy-footing approach, based as it was on the premiss that the interest in cults was a manifestation of a spiritual awakening among young people — a view that the Bishop of Edmonton seemed happy to endorse. After myearlier criticism I was sorry to see Bernard Levin, too, being wheeled on to give his blessing to this point of view, specifically linked on this occasion to the 'Guru' Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh about whom he has written so enthusiastically in The Times. It is always sad to see old Bernard, in his day the best exposer of humbug we had, lending his name to the most obvious balderdash of the type peddled by Bhagwan, the briefest survey of whose utterances is enough to show their worthlessness — 'The idea of perfection is the root cause of all neurosis'; 'Be selfish, because unless you love yourself, you will not bother to be aware'; `Do not renounce the world, renounce the mind'. These are just a few of the Bhagwan's false pearls, not to mention his famous discourse on 'The hundred and one uses for the word fuck', which, it now transpires, was cribbed from Playboy magazine. You may call Bhagwan a funny man or even a clever man but what he is obviously not is a Holy man, if for no other reason that Holy men do not concern themselves with 'the hundred and one uses for the word fuck'. All this might simply be good for a laugh were it not for the fact that too many people have ended up in psychiatric wards as a result of getting involved with such cults. By taking them to some extent at their own word and not setting out with a simple determination to expose, Credo falls into the trap and, I suspect, only helps to swell the recruitment figures.
Television has created at least two unforgettable 'characters'. One was Arthur Lowe's Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, the other, Warren Mitchell's Alf Garnett. Mainwaring, alas, appears to have deceased but Garnett has now made a very welcome return to the screen in a new series of Till Death Us Do Part (LWT), albeit rather late at night, on the grounds presumably that the programme is somewhat crude; though personally I would prefer my children to watch Till Death than embarrassing rubbish like Butterflies which goes out at 8.30 on the BBC. Alf and Mrs Alf have now retired to Eastbourne where they were to be seen wandering aimlessly up the sea-front in winter-time, Mrs Alf saying that she didn't think she'd ever seen so much water — 'Not all in the one place'. They ended up in the Queen's Hotel where ma gritmmuzak4inkling lounge Alf was stung £4.96 for a round of three drinks. 'Not like Wapping', said Mrs Alf with her unique look of wistful resignation. This may not be quite as strong as it used to be but it is much stronger than most of the pulp that is put out under the comedy heading. Patricia Hayes as the sex-mad lodger, Min, is a welcome addition. I couldn't think to begin with what was so unusual about the programme and then realised with surprise and delight that there was no studio audience. At last someone has had the courage to put on a comedy show without a lot of guffawing morons in the background.
The BBC's post-mortem on the Ripper was a disappointing affair which left too many stones unturned. At the end of the day the interest lay not in the character of Sutcliffe—who like most murderers, be they the Yorkshire Ripper or even Adolf Hitler, is a boring person — but more in the detective story. Why was it that despite all the evidence pointing to Sutcliffe he managed always to get away? Why were the police so convinced by the voice on the anonymous tape recording? The only good impression was made by Sutcliffe's father who said he wanted every father in the country to be glad it was his sonand not theirs.
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