Television
Talking points
Peter Levi
The managers of television are not untalented, just unimaginative. They go on chipping and polishing from year to year until they arrive at an amazing formal perfection which is said to be the envy of the world. Its surface quality is smooth and clear and quite dead, since it is produced by a process, not by an act of individual genius. If it were better, it would have more failures. And yet nowhere is indi- viduality more apparent, or more impor- tant, than wherever it does appear on the bland screen. The manageri know that; they will suck a character dry and spit it out, but one remembers these people almost for ever, from Gilbert Harding to Muffin the Mule.
The programming is worst when they suppose no one cares, the last surviving viewers being heavy drinkers. One evening last week we got darts on two channels, snooker, a pop concert, and modern jazz. What would one like so late in the even- ing? An opera by Rameau, a mystery play, real jazz, the mathematics of naval con- struction, the life of an agricultural labour- er, a repeat of Scott of the Antarctic, which I cannot remember, the night office in Latin, an interview with William Golding, a silent film of Henry Moore sculptures, readings in English from the day's Le Monde, a film on the life of racehorses. In fact, the sort of thing anyone might talk about late at night. What television lacks is the influence of Peacock. This is because the management despise and underesti- mate their audience. I wish Diderot had been a television critic.
But the good is very good, Alan Ayck- bourn's play Absent Friends (BBC2), for instance. And Gus Macdonald conducted Channel 4's Right to Reply brilliantly; he held the ring under just enough control and the argument, which was in-fighting about race relations and local politics, a subject I do not normally find attractive, came very much alive. I was sorry when it was over. Now the War is Over (BBC2) treats another boring subject very well. But those who wondered about Alexander Chancel- lor's guarded disappointment last week over The Soldiers (BBC1) will be relieved to hear it has got much worse. The script is full of flatulence and there are much better genuine shots of cavalry than the fictional ones they showed. Mr Forsyth seemed foolish beyond words.
Bookmark (BBC2) is going downhill too. It must create a strong reaction against the literary', no bad thing I suppose. Mr Hamilton grunting in Italian was quite funny, but the whole programme weighed like a leaden crumpet. It simply seemed to have lost its way, which is the producer's fault not the presenter's. Even Italo Cal- vino emerged as somehow meaningless, which he is not. I got so annoyed with Bookmark I cannot believe my notes about it. I preferred an absurd ITV film about marmots, who live high up on a Swiss mountain, tranquilly unaware of books or fashions.
There is a lot about health nowadays: of the body, not of the soul. No doubt it reflects the millions and millions of pounds poured into medical research. The Taste of Health (BBC2) was fortunately not about health at all, but about nice Claudia Roden poaching stuffed Turkish aubergines in a sauce, and making a cold fish salad almost like the old Etoile's, and discovering that you can do vegetables in foil on charcoal. It all reminded me of the Rule of Saint Benedict, who says you can have two cooked dishes or porridges or grain-based mashes, but also fruit and a nibble of any young vegetables you can lay hands on. He would not have approved of Claudia Roden's skinned chicken marinated four hours in yoghurt and cooked with Chilean ginger.
What I have liked best on television this week, apart from old films like Michael Powell's 1937 The Edge of the World, made on the Shetland Island of Foula, have undoubtedly been the interviews with Sir Nicholas Henderson on The 20th Century Remembered (BBC2). They cut more sharply and go more deeply into our history than one could dare to hope. He modestly gives one the illusion of under- standing things as clearly as he does, a very rare gift indeed. The last of these inter- views will be shown on Saturday 5 Octo- ber. Even Saturday Review (BBC2) is an anticlimax.
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