Television
Low Marx
Richard Ingrams
At this season it is customary for selfrespecting TV critics to work back over a year's viewing and try to reach some general conclusions about the state of affairs, allotting good marks for the best programmes etc. Having only been on the job since August I think I can excuse myself from any such prize-giving. I doubt, however, that even if I had been doing it all year
would be in any position to judge. I confess, for example, to not having seen a single episode of I Claudius, When the Boat Comes In, Hawaii Five-0, The Last of the Summer Wine and countless other offerings.
I am not sure that I have the intellectual and moral stamina to go in for this sort of thing. These critics would appear to be strong-minded to a degree. Or is it, as I suspect, the case that after a certain period the critical faculties become insensitive to awfulness? Too much viewing may not cause blindness but could it lead to softening of the brain, lassitude and indifference to of the brain, lassitude and indifference to rubbish ? I still find after about ten minutes of an episode, say, of The Glittering Prizes that my toes begin to curl inwards; then I find myself wrapping one leg around the other and folding my arms tightly round my chest in an illogical attempt to suppress the cries of rage and despair which seem to well up from the centre of my being, until .at last unable to cope with the torture any more, I get to my feet and switch the thing off.
It is perhaps difficult to feel sympathetic towards the BBC or ITV as Christmas looms up. The festival engenders a feeling of deep despondency in any event, but even to glance at the Radio Times with its full colour pictures of funny men baring their teeth in insane grins is enough to make one get on the phone to the Samaritans. As usual the bulk of the entertainment will consist of old films. I have been through the BBC's list, inanely catalogued as usual by the ridiculous Philip Jenkinson. There are no less than sixty-two old films being shown on the BBC over the Christmas holiday. I wish to see only one of them—the Marx brothers in A Night at the Opera. Needless to say it is being shown at 4.40 on Christmas Eve, which I happen to know is the very worst possible period of the season at which to relax. It is a time when pre-Christmas excitement and hysteria are at their height, when neighbours are ringing up with what Sherlock Holmes described as 'those invitations which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie' and everything is getting generally out of hand. The BBC, I am certain, has deliberately chosen this moment to put on the only old film I want to see, in order to annoy me. Men must endure.
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