Television
Too much blandness
Peter Levi
It is an alarming thought that 24 per cent of our householders and a third of all adults live alone. They must watch a lot of television. At least they can now do cook- ing with one eye on Delia Smith in One is Fun (BBC2). She said a huge block of parmesan would change their lives. So long as they keep off the food advertisements. You can smell the grease through the television screen. Saatchi and Saatchi tak- ing over the McDonalds (Big Mac) account seem to have made all their rivals hyperac- tive. They say, `We have always wanted to appear an English operation,' which seems very odd. Saatchi have sold us a Prime Minister (me at least) but I doubt if they can sell us a hamburger. I do not expect the time spent on Japanese fishpaste (Tomor- row's World, BBC1) made many converts either.
Programme planning recently has gone beyond all bounds. One evening we had two programmes about dogshit. Open Space's `Balham Dogwatch' on BBC2 was about pooper-scoopers, and as silly- facetious as you can get. It was made by the Community Film Unit, which deserves to be dissolved. Channel 4's Diverse Re- ports was about a thing called Toxicara canis, found in dog excreta, which if you 'ingest' it eats away human eyes. Not that the problem is not real: in Paris they move 20 tons a day, and in this country we have six million dogs, so they said. Another night at 10.30 p.m. we had a choice between tennis (BBC1); Cardiff Singer of the World, the fifth preliminary round no less (BBC2); how lesbian mothers cope with fear and bigotry, Breaking the Silence (Channel 4); and disturbed ladies in Hollo- way jail on The London Programme (ITV). We need spiky, even eccentric persons on television, but common-sense subjects. Calum Kennedy's Commando Course (BBC2) about a theatrical tour of Western Scotland and its troubles was wonderful. The enemy is blandness. Dance Interna- tional (BBC2) is bland and slickly written, but Balanchine redeemed it by his obvious genuineness, and above all even a very few minutes of Stravinsky redeemed it. You do not have to be a genius or even a Russian. Noel Edmunds, who presents Time of Your Life (BBC1), in which we go back to a given year, is pleasing, modern and individual. Leslie Crowther, an old actor who started in Regent's Park and whose mother catered for the Festival of Britain, made him a good subject. The high point was the Beverley Sisters; I had never realised all those years ago how good they are. I wish they had a programme of their own. Little and Large remembering 1977 was a less good idea.
You would think Great Collectors (BBC2) indicated interesting people, but not at all, it only indicates blandness. Malcolm Forbes, the American publisher with one more Faberge egg than the Kremlin has and 100,000 toy soldiers in Morocco, let alone 80 motorcycles in Col- orado, sounded as if he came out of an unimaginative novel. Only Faberge hens ought to brood on Faberge eggs. Still, this was a good idea, and if the programme was not a spoof I am pleased to know such people exist. Fantastical fiction is constant- ly overtaken by real life, and on television if one nods off one quite often wakes mistaking one for the other.
The big excitement for me was Phil Drabble in One Man and His Dog (BBC2), with the junior handlers, in a drench of rain at Chatsworth. There was a Welsh boy too shy to talk, with two sheepdogs on a motorcycle. Most of the young shepherds suffered from what Mr Drabble called 'stroppy sheep'; the winner was a Lan- cashire boy of 15 of extreme coolness. What I liked best was Mr Drabble's kind- ness about these children and his scarcely restrained enthusiasm. He breathed every move in advance, he all but whistled, he practically became a sheepdog. The Lan- cashire boy, Mark France, with Flash, seemed modest and pleased to win. Most of the parents were famous old shepherds as well, and their smiles were equally shy. Friday is the big day of the year, the senior championship. I back John Thomas (Eng- land) with Don, a dog that any sensible sheep would obey. But you cannot tell, this programme has many aspects.
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