Television
The G-String of Death
By JOHN BRAINE LIKE the harried little man in the TV 7'intes advertisement I miss many programmes that I want to see. But I never miss Let's Go Dancing. Partly, I expect, for pro- fessional reasons. For it presents one painlessly with the essence of dance hall, the kingdom of Valerie and June and Denise, of white nylon net and gold sequins, of shocking pink taffeta, of brocade decorated with gold, of tulle and rhinestones, of the strict-tempo music which ends on the final bar with a swirl of skirts and petticoats settling like flowers. I'm no judge of dancing myself—no one except my wife has ever danced with me twice—but I derive a gen- uine resthetic pleasure from the dedicated precision of both amateur and professional contestants in this programme. I particularly enjoy the formation dancing; here ballroom dancing breaks away from its cheek-to-cheek, toile-a-deux associations and becomes a social activity,,almost a folk art. Wales won the contest this time in lime green and deep violet with blue accessories. The girls' skirts for the finale, by means of some process I don't even pretend to understand, divided in the middle to reveal and free their very pretty legs. This was in perfectly good taste, and I don't question the judges' decision; nevertheless, it smacked too much of cabaret.
A different kind of reality erupted from the screen in the twelfth of the BBC series War in the Air, dealing with the end of the war in Germany. I can't get out of my mind the young faces of the aircrew who were, the commentator told us, all killed in action shortly after he'd made a bombing tcip with them. If I am today a fat, self-satisfied man making a living in the job of my choice, it's because these boys—most of them not old enough to vote or to marry without their parents' consent —died for us. The Cold Dawn, to give it its official title, took away all the noggin and moustachio and Gone-for-a-Burton glamour from the RAF, plucked away the last tawdry. G-string from the private parts of death. It revealed the war in which aircrews cheered when operations were cancelled, in which being killed in action was referred to brutally and yet with dignity (for death is real, death isn't a joke to be smoothed away with euphuisms) as getting the chopper. 'You're going With us and you, don't have to?' the aircrew said to the BBC war correspondent. 'You must be mad.'
For war had by then become a business, a business in which the dividends were the ruins of Germany, the sad queues of civilians handing in dead men's uniforms, the children staggering round wide-eyed in the desolation of their homes. And also—God help us if we forget it—the faces at Belsen stunned with joy at the fact of rescue.
Which brings me round deviously to a con- sideration of what makes real TV, Real TV is first and foremost live. This holds good with documen- tary as much as with plays. And whatever is used on the medium must be written especially for it. The most mediocre TV play has an impact which the best film can never possess. It's the difference between fresh-caught cod and tinned Grade One salmon. It's the difference between walking on a six-inch plank which rests on the ground and one which is suspended a hundred feet from the ground. From my own very limited experience I know that the consciousness of millions of eyes watching one is an enormous stimulus. You're on your own in live TV; the producer has merely shown you the way. In filmed TV, you are always to some extent holding his hand.
But—and here I'm going to contradict myself— whatever is shown on the small screen is TV. I'm not going to let either the BBC or ITV have their cake and eat it too. They can't produce TV the easy way by buying packaged shows and also have the credit for being purists. Let old films be shown in cinemas : if they're worth seeing they'll find an audience. I pay the creative workers of the BBC and ITV this compliment : they don't work only for money. There isn't one of them who wouldn't or couldn't turn out—and his budget would be no more than the purChase price of a film—anything up to a couple of hours of real TV at any time he's asked. There is no question of not being able to fill in viewing time.
Not that this alters what I, feel—and still feel —about War in the Air. The waters of salvation can flow from the jaws of a dead dog, and I don't care from what source such shatteringly important expositions of contemporary history come. The truth is, the truth is the truth : let us love and honour it.
The ITV serial Ivanhoe presents a different kind of history. I watched it last week because, to be quite frank, I'm a sucker for blood-and- thunder. The armoured horseman against the sky- line is for me a symbol of pure delight. (It isn't so long ago that he was a bloodily prosaic fact.) Alas, I didn't' enjoy it so much as I enjoyed its predecessor, Sir Lancelot. Roger Moore, as Ivan- hoe, was both too civilised and reasonable and too much the superman to give me the authentic taste of battle. The wicked baron's henchmen fell off their horses almost before he touched them. Ivanhoe isn't„of course, written for adults, but I wish Mr. Palmer Thompson, its author, would con- sider the possibility of giving his scripts a stiffening of historical fact. He might take a look at Sir Walter Scott, too.
For old time's sake I watched the final instal- ment of Flash Cordon. I missed it when it was shown in 1939 at the Pavilion De Luxe, Shipley. This primitive SF with its super-cinema interior decor, winged men in armour, ray guns, and characters with names like Bling and Barin and Aura and Dr. Kharkov, must have hdd a certain 'verisimilitude for me at fifteen. Any intelligent ten-year-old now could pick it to pieces. But I will not. Goodbye Flash Gordon, goodbye Dale Arden, goodbye Dr. Kharkov. Why couldn't they leave you in honourable retirement, bright and credible in some corner of my memory, always escaping triumphantly from Bug-Eyed Monsters and Tunnels of Terror?
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