Television
Hogwash
Richard In grams
T see that I have been taken to task, in the 1 friendliest possible way of course, by Mr Auberon Waugh over my disparaging reference to the naked bums in the second episode of Brideshead Revisited, Mr Waugh insists that the bums were not, as I said, a sign of gratuitous 'gaiety' injected by the Granada producers but a delightful moment of pure comedy which produced a ripple of tinkling laughter in the Combe Florey drawing room when they were seen by the assembled members of the Waugh family. I don't want to disillusion them about Granada's intentions so I shall say no more. But I am now fully convinced that bums, male and female, glimpsed in a TV serial are a sure indication that what you are about to see won't be any good.
It was bums (male) that made one switch off Fanny by Gaslight, the BBC's recent Victorian serial. There was also a bum (female) after about five minutes of The Borgias (BBCI) which was even more cynical. The object here was to say 'Don't leap to the assumption that this is just another boring old history lesson. Here is a bit of bum to whet your appetite.' My own response is that if that is going to be the attitude at the start, I see no reason why any of us should be expected to watch any more, though as it happens, I have since tuned in to The Borgias, finding it utterly bewildering and incomprehensible. Most of it seems to have been filmed in the dark, the leading players can't even speak English, and the rest is young men with beards fighting each other. Once again the BBC has spent millions of our money to no avail.
In August I commented on a BBC World About Us programme called 'The God That Fled', a critical look at the Indian guru beloved of Bernard Levin, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or Bagwash for short). Written by Christopher Hitchens, this programme, though not going far enough in my view, all the same did much to expose the cult of the Bagwash for what it is, a bogus and sinister business production of much misery. To MY amazement this Sunday, only about two months after Mr Hitchens's exposure, the BBC put on another programme about the Bagwash in the Everyman series, this time introduced by Mr Peter France, about whom I have had a few critical things to say in my time. Although Mr France did not say as much it seemed pretty obvious that this Everyman film had been produced in response to the predictable protests by the Bagwash movement about the earlier Hitchens film, because, coming so soon after the previous film, it was clearly designed. to put the case for the Bagwash as a bona fide religious movement. Mr France, as always earnest and responsible, insisted at the beginning and the end that those who join the movement do so in search of a genuine religious experience. This being something that conventional religion fails to provide, therefore Bhagwan is a good thing. Mr France seems to be under the impression that jumping up and down with a glazed and fatuous grin on your face is a sign of a genuine religious experience. There is certainly no other evidence, either in the Bagwash's banal and often obscene aphorisms or in the disgusting therapy classes practised by his followers, to suggest that anything religious is going on. In his anxiety to find something good here, France ended up giving unwanted publicity to a cult which has only caused a great deal of unhappiness to a great many people. For the second time this year I sugest it is time for Mr France to be replaced.
I felt no urge to go and see the film of The French Lieutenant's Woman after seeing the director, Karel Reisz, and the scriptwriter, Harold Pinter, gassing about it to Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show (LWT). They were both so cold and intellectual that it was difficult to believe that the finished film is any good. As he gets older Pinter gets more and more sinister looking, he admitted that he finds it impossible to write 'happy scenes' and when you see him you can understand and appreciate his problem.
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