Television
Charity Viewing
By CLIFFORD HANLEY
THE season of goodwill, which lasts practically for ever in Scotland, always comes with threatening undertones. There is something about an un- varying orgy of good cheer and cosiness that paralyses the will, I find, and television is always liable to produce more cosiness than anything else does.
It's like Christmas pudding or black bun— two noble dishes which stir the palate in an- ticipation and rapidly stun it after three help- ings. Actually, I'm all in favour of cosiness, and even togetherness, on or off the screen, and I commend the boys and girls on both channels for keeping the good cheer flowing with such resolute energy. I remember with genial pleasure Brian Rix and Max Bygraves and even Dickie Henderson. My pleasure is sharper and the memory keener for Eric Sykes, who turned up with Hattie Jacques in the BBC's big Christmas show and sent up This Is Your Life. In a sea of Christmas pudding, you see, a nice tart savoury sticks out.
The limits of cosiness were overreached in Sunday's big charity show from the Palladium. I am also in favour (in principle) of charity shows—let us by all means syphon off enter- tainment money for spastics or orphans or any- one in need. But I suspect that in order to enjoy the typical charity jamboree, you actually have to have paid heavily for a ticket, so that you bring into the theatre a warm glow of your own virtue and become a part of the big jolly con- spiracy. Seen for nothing, at home, the all-star. show looked like what it was: a great host of kind-hearted entertainers doing very little ex- cept appear; having an absolutely hysterical time demonstrating that disc jockeys can't sing; film stars Beating the Clock, or failing to Beat the Clock, just like people; and not one, but two whole pantomimes.
These last were a joint item—two companies trying to do Cinderella and Aladdin on the same stage—and the idea must have sounded absolutely hysterical when it was suggested by Colonel Lloyd (who was given proper credit for it). In the event, like so many brilliant theatrical ideas, it was simply a muddle, and merely proved that you can get away with any- thing in a charity show. One shouldn't, I feel, be snide or hypercritical about welt-meaning charitable ventures. They are simply not television, that's all.
The most nourishing pleasures of the season, in fact, were hard, astringent items: Alan Whicker's series on life in Alaska; the bitter American war film, A Walk in the Sun; and the BBC's production of flecida Gabler, which was so potent-and downright human that I am not prepared to assess it critically in the festive context. It was tremendous. We can't really enjoy cosiness and togetherness, after all, with- out facing the terrible fact of our apartness.
Previous page
