Television
Nonstarter for 4
Richard Ingrams
Ihave never been quite sure what purpose the new Channel 4 is meant to serve, apart from creating more jobs, which nowadays is used as an excuse for any pointless exercise. It was obvious that the 'more means worse' rule applies to televi- sion, and as the present independent com- panies are unable to fill up their schedules without a large quantity of rubbish, it seem- ed inevitable that when asked to produce a whole lot more programmes, they would turn out to be even more rubbishy than the first lot. So it has transpired.
Even so, I must admit that I was not
prepared for the disastrous opening night, which must have been the biggest media flop since the first issue of Now!. What was surprising was that quite clearly no attempt had been made to kick off with something special. Quite the opposite, in fact. At 4.45 on Tuesday a voice said, 'Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be able to say to you Welcome to Channel 4.' Then there was a montage of little film sequences stitched together with no apparent purpose and finally the first programme began — a dreary little quiz show called Countdown, a TV version of Scrabble with all the excite- ment taken out of it. One thing was ob- vious, and that was the way it had all been done on the cheap, with only two con- testants and minimal props.
Apart from the air of cheapness, the other noticeable thing about Channel 4, judging by its opening night, was the flavour of the Guardian's Women's Page. A lot of the stuff is distinctly priggish and feminist in tone. Typical was the choice of Ms Hermione Lee as the compere of Book Four, the new channel's literary slot. Ms Lee, the subject of a recent long and fascinating correspondence in Private Eye, turns out to be a sort of intellectual version of Janet Street-Porter, a bespectacled slightly Cockneyfied academic whose ap- proach to books is what could be expected from someone who reviews novels for the Observer. Her television debut was fairly disastrous. Like the channel as a whole she made little attempt to be lively and seemed unable to control her most verbose pan- ellist, the crashing bore Len Deighton who banged on endlessly about his own many good points. The discussion centred round war books and there was a lot of emphasis on the fact that men make wars and men write books about them.
There was an earnest Guardian air too about the channel's new hour-long news programme. A whole hour of news is a pretty daunting prospect at the best of times but in this instance no effort had been made to try and make it look interesting. Again there was a strong emphasis on women, with Sarah Hogg opening the batting with an item on government spending. Michael Sissons, who looks more and more like the youthful Reginald Maudling, read the headlines out of a folder and Godfrey Hodgson, the ponderous ex-Sunday Times man, buried his head in his notes when he came on to deliver a long and leaden lecture on the state of the American nation.
After all this it seemed only appropriate that the highlight of the opening night's viewing should be Walter, a distinctly har- rowing film starring Ian McKellen as a halfwit confined to an asylum after the death of his parents. You needed a strong stomach to watch this film, which included scenes of squalor and sadism, not to men- tion the usual four-letter-word stuff. In fact some of it was so unpleasant that I began to think seriously of getting rid of my televi- sion set altogether. The producer, Stephen Frears, seemed determined to rub our noses in it in every sense, but to what end it was never quite clear. Walter himself was an VI' convincing figure whose mental condition was not defined so that one could nal feel emotionally involved with him. It was also a mistake to use real lunatics in tled asylum scenes as the sight of them evok pity in a way which Walter, for all Ian McKellen's skilful acting, could not hope t° do. Walter was followed by a programme called Five Go Mad in Dorset, a tasteless and quite unfunny skit on the Enid BlYt°,11, series. I didn't stay up to watch the al", female review, In the Pink, which roundeu off the evening's 'entertainment'.
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