Television
Team-work
Richard Ingrams
As the weeks pass I become more more convinced that the way out of Ow economic mess is for the Government,f hand the BBC over to private enterPn':f Mrs Thatcher has shown no sign yet grasping the nettle but she is bound to en:e round to my view sooner or later. "1 Falklands crisis has proved yet again til8e the BBC has lost the authority that it otcri had. By leaving it to pygmies like "le Humphrys and John Simpson to keep n'o nation informed it has obviously failed the rise to the occasion, but when it came to till more important job of explaining what fly going on it has been beaten to the post eve' t time by ITV's Weekend World. On the las three Sundays I find I have been autornai tically switching on my telly at the stroke Fs, noon to catch up on news of the crisi,,s, Weekend World has a number of far Weekend has a more unappealing signature tun'', think than any other programme on tn
„air. Nor can I wholly approve of Brian Walden's heavily emphatic delivery. But all the same you can't argue with the fact that unlike. Panorama or Newsnight the pro- gramme does have authority. This is partly because it is not afraid to go to outside ex- perts to build up a picture rather than rely- ing on insider TV hacks, and it is always historical to put current events in their nistorical perspective.
It is when people die that I am most hit by the appalling inadequacy of the BBC's Simpson and Humphrys team. Arthur Lowe's Captain Mainwaring was one of the two or three great characters to have been thrown up by television (Alf Garnett is another. I can't for the moment think of a !_hird). Lowe's death last week must have been felt by millions of people with genuine scirrow. On these occasions the BBC's newsreader assumes greater than ever significance as he speaks not only for the BBC but for the whole nation. At any rate some kind of dignity is called for. But with the wretched Simpson writhing in his seat like a double-glazing salesman, the occasion inevitably becomes an anticlimax. In any case, the BBC don't bother to do proper obituaries, even when the man concerned, Arthur Lowe, did more for their cause than almost anyone. All we got, apart from a few hurriedly thrown together tributes, was a re-showing of an old Dad's Army, the one the gormless Pike gets, his head stuck in `n e Park railings. This was certainly not the best — for one thing it ends with poor old pike still stuck — but it was enough to re- mind one of Lowe's wonderful creation. The interesting thing about Dad's Army was that Lowe was never a one-man band. The success of the show was due to a team effort with actors like John Laurie and Clive Dunn providing brilliant foils for Lowe's Falstaffian bluster. The same ap- Plies to Till Death Us Do Part. Warren Mit-
would not have succeeded without Dandy Nicholas, Patricia Hayes and Una Stubbs. I hope, by the way, we have not seen the last of this cast.
I had assumed that the downfall of Hum- Phrey Burton last year would bring to an end once and for all the appearances on the screen of the American conductor and com- Poser Leonard Bernstein, for whom Burton seemed to be carrying about 403 torches of °, ne kind or another. Not, alas, so. To my horror Bernstein's ugly mug was filling the screen on Sunday's Omnibus, this time con- ducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in RIgar's 'Enigma' Variations with Mr Bur- ton once again in evidence as Director. It was hard to see the point of letting loose New York hipster Bernstein in Elgar's Ed- wardian garden party. He seemed to have no feeling at all for the music or indeed the Players, whose obvious hostility towards Int the cameras could not disguise. The Most famous variation, 'Nimrod', proceed- 151 at a glacier-like speed which even the late u, r Otto Klemperer would have found too slow. 'Let it happen by itself,' Bernstein
Taki will be back next week. keeps an eye on the newspapers.' cried in mock ecstasy as the music swelled to its lugubrious climax. In case anyone was interested Mr Barry Norman announced after it was all over that 'a far longer ver- sion of that rehearsal will be shown later this year on BBC2'. I will be open to dinner invitations on the evening in question.
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