Television
Fat hope
Wendy Cope
Some, perhaps most, of you will have experienced that awful state of apathy that causes one to slump in front of an indiffe- rent late-night movie. Not even the realisa- tion that it is going to be fairly boring, as well as fairly bad, is fuel enough to produce the energy to switch it off. These days it overtakes me rarely, since almost anything — even reading a fairly boring book of poems — is more congenial than watching unnecessary television. But one night last week I sat through a two-hour film called Escape from New York (ITV), wondering why. In this film, which seemed to be set some time in the future, Manhattan Island has become a penal colony. Escape was impossible — once you were there, you were there for life. The inhabitants, need- less to say, were wild and savage and mostly very dirty. Dirt is often essential in the interests of authenticity but I can't help preferring films where the people are clean. There was a great deal of fighting and chasing around in cars (oh yes, they had petrol on the island) and there were hardly any women. Unfortunately, an 'It's not the lies, it's the way he tells them.' aeroplane carrying the President of the United States crash-landed in the middle of all this. The plot concerned the efforts of the authorities to get him safely out again. Either he would get killed in the last two minutes or he wouldn't. Who cares? How could it possibly be worth two hours of a lifetime waiting to find out? The President was played by Donald Pleasance, a good actor, though not quite as good in this role as Ronald Reagan.
Perhaps Irma Kurtz is right when she says that entertainment must either be first-rate or third-rate. Heimat (BBC 2), which was indubitably first-rate, is over now. Watching the last episode was as sad as coming to the end of a really good book — I hated having to say goodbye to the characters. I suppose it has to be said that Heimat was more than first-rate entertain- ment, it was art — though exactly how one draws a distinction between those two things is not a question I am prepared to tackle here and now. If it had been boring, its serious intentions would have cut no ice with me.
Since it will probably be a while before there's anything as good as Heimat to look forward to every week, a regular fix of glossy garbage would be something. On Sunday I tried Howard's Way (BBC 1) for the first time but it won't do. For one thing, it isn't American. I don't know why this kind of thing has to be American, but it does seem to help. Furthermore it is about yachts, and yachts don't interest me unless they are extremely large and luxu- rious. Though, come to think of it, lack of interest in the oil industry didn't prevent me from being addicted to Dallas for at least a year. I think perhaps the problem is that the characters in Howard's Way are all unsympathetic and tedious — I am not much drawn to the kind of Englishman who looks as if he should be advertising pipe tobacco. But lots of people get hooked on this programme — maybe it just takes time.
Last week's Bodymatters (BBC 1) was about something that does interest me, namely fat. It came on just as I had finished my supper — just as the surplus was turning into triglyceride and pouring into my fat-cells, making them swell up, like the enormous model of fat-cells they had in the studio. The image still haunts me. The good news is that there is a new slimming pill that helps your brown fat- cells burn up this triglyceride and the bad news is that it won't be available for years. Conscious that I have given some read- ers the impression I am tremendously old, I feel impelled to mention that, despite this obsession, I am not really obese. I am not, for example, as fat as Pat in EastEnders (BBC 1), a person whose welfare is causing me some concern. Her boyfriend's mother, a horrendously censorious old cow, has come to stay and is giving Pat a really hard time. It could soon become too painful to watch.
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