Television
Home Movies
By PETER FORSTER BBC TV has a way of encouraging odd little Os by amateur or semi-ploies" sional film-makers. These would never dream of approaching ITV, but theY know they may be able to sell an idea to BBC, because BBC does not have to sell the resultant film. One such is the record of the Oxford and Cambridge Expedition to eSouthe r nAnool enrsic a, currently being reshown in t material, but a commentary soporific beyond the claims of Horlicks.
Another offbeat effort is the series just ended in which the Dimbleby family showed 011°4 reports of their holidays, ostensibly to help US choose our own. Mrs. D is clearly a woman o1 charm and intelligence; Mr. D, of course, he" longs to the nation; no misbehaviour was re• corded on the part of the children. The films were harmless and blameless. 'Today I intend to sit under the shade of my big umbrella and catch UP on my reading,' explained Mr. D in Corsica (of was it Villefranche?), and throughodt he used no word which could not have been said with bated breath inside Westminster Abbey. The previous week the main excitement had been to watch him underwater, wearing an aqualung—a sight that would have given the Haases a turn.
My purpose is not to mock this indispensable commentator. He and his family have every right to make their home movies. What seems to the questionable is whether half an hour of peak time during four weeks, should have been devoted to showing them. I do not query the principle behind such offerings. All power to the elbow of patron age, whoever it belongs to, though BBC does sometimes confuse patronage with being patron- ising. But if you want a film that is part travel service—well, here we are in the middle of the biggest travel boom ever, with experts abound- ing: it is hard to believe that the best counsellors the BBC can come by in this field are the Swiss Family Dimbleby. lf, on the other hand, some" thing personal, quirky, idiomatic is wanted by way of a travel record—get, say, James Robert- son Justice, or even Harding, or another chE rac- ter vivid enough to maintain, in his own right, our interest in his travels.
BBC, in short, too often lets itself become the province of the professional amateur, instead of using the strength of its non-commercial situation to encourage professionals to do work with limited appeal. The apotheosis of this trend may be seen by any who can endure the Thursday half-hour of Get Ahead, a do-it-yourself gimmick judges by the News Chronicle, in which Judges supposed to have succeeded question con- testants eager to show that they could make the best use of £5,000 in business. Really just a more elaborate variation on the old ITV programme, State Your Case, this should not be inflicted on a BBC peak-hour audience. I know BBC will urge that the aim is worthy; perhaps, but what they never see is that the worthiest of aims fails if the product is dull, dull, dull.
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