Television
The Doctor
Richard lngrams
I was expecting to be dissatisfiedby Jonathan Miller's massive new medical series The Body in Question (BBC-2) but had not anticipated that I would have to leave the room for long periods owing to squeamishness. I heartily enjoy the good doctor making funny faces, but the sight of him brandishing livers and spleens in mY face was altogether too much, though once again I felt grateful.-for my old black and w. tute set, as I'm sure it was all much worse In colour. It struck me during the first rambling episode that 'The Doctor' was really much more like 'A Doctor' than I had hitherto realised; 'A Doctor' that is who tells us in a slightly condescending way boring or obvious facts about what happens When The Patient' feels a pain, or how the heart is like a jolly old pump, pumping away like billy-o. The trouble with Doctor Jonathan is that he dabbles not only m medicine but in linguistic philosophy and anthropology as well. He is likely therefore not only to broach questions such as 'What do we mean when we say we feel a stabbing pain?' (than which there are many more rt.-ft., questions that need answering), ut also to describe all human behaviour in terms of 'rites' and 'rituals', like a thinking man's Desmond Morris. Much of this stuff Why to me arbitrary and questionable. why does the cystitis, as opposed to the akngina, sufferer not experience alarm when he feels his pain. I'm sure I would be jolly ia.larmed. And can you really describe "fatPg Ill' as an action, something the patient es voluntarily? I am writing to Bryan Magee for an explanation. ,One of the prizes offered to the lucky Winners of Bruce Forsyth's joke contest was a I „ free trip for two to America. I suppose that to almost everyone except me such a Prize would seem like a dream come true. certain friends, Sir Peter Jaybotham for exatnple, America represents an earthly paradise home not only of the brave, but of .„e rich, the sun-tanned, the powerful and isle sexy. The BBC's Head of Arts and a lisle, Mr Humphrey Burton, is obviously ..,11.0th.er such man. Why else should almost ?_cut hisri concerts be American? Only the ther a Y we had, live by satellite, Guilin.. nducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic %),rchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. ei 'h at very week I had heard, live by my own a ,r, s Menuhin conducting the Royal oicitlharmonic at the Festival Hall. It w_c_tirred to me at the time to wonder why it as that the BBC which for all its general 'ness has done a lot to promote class al Music in this country, should prefer i to oc,,nso. r an American rather than a British `aslon. You would think, artistic con siderations apart, that it would be considerably cheaper. I was glad to see Mr Burton getting stick from other critics last week. 'Drivel' is not a word one is used to reading in a Daily Telegraph headline. They brought it out however to describe Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood (BBC-2) an Omnibus programme devoted to the life and times of an American journalist by the name of Hunter S. Thompson. No one, apart from people like Clive James, had heard of the fellow — an unpleasant bald bore with a ranch in Colorado and a Mynah bird called Edward — and there was some argument about why the BBC should give over its main Arts programme to his tedious views. Again I suspect the explanation is simply that the producers had an urge to go to America.
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