Telev.s.on
Out on Top
By PETER FORSTER
HEREWITH tWO axioms concerning politicians and television, demon- strated yet again by the close coverage of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. One: personalities almost always blur principles. Thousands must have felt less strongly about apartheid after seeing Dr. Verwoerd in person, amenable, dignified, avuncular, while nobody could be more persuasive and convincing in his own massive manner than Sir Roy Welensky. The point, be it understood, is not whether their viewpoints are tenable, but that their impressive personalities make them seem more right. Their supporters might even argue that the agreeable personalities are an extension bearing out prin- ciples, but this is simply to make the same point. What needs to be borne in mind is that if, by unhappy reincarnation, Hitler were to arrive tomorrow at London Airport, some dim and deferential television reporter would un- doubtedly be on hand to murmur a question about reported differences of opinion between Herr Hitler and certain people of allegedly Jewish faith, after which there would be a deprecatory half-denial from the guest accom- panied by a sly dig or two, and many a viewer would be tempted to reflect that you can't believe everything you read about in print.
Secondly: top men always come out on top. In other words, Prime Ministers never lose TV arguments, if only because they never really indulge in them. A quasi-divinity hedges them by virtue of their high official status, so that nobody is ever rude to them, and even a reasonably hard- pressing line of questions (as in Richard Goold- Adams's exemplary A-R interview with Ver- woerd) can be blandly turned aside, because the rules of the contest give all advantages of weight to the subject. Personally I would incline to the view that top men are genuinely the most impres- sive (think of Khrushchev, Kennedy, de Gaulle), at least in public, but even those who disagree would surely accept that there is an authority about authority which is, to put it at lowest, influential. What correctives may be applied? One is to turn to our profit the concealed weakness of the top men, whose freedom of speech is restricted by considerations of secrecy and political tact: hence the value of discussions like Free Speech, which, however much of a ritual bear-fight it may seem on occasion, does literally live up to its title because its participants are unfettered by office or (for the most part) the Whips. Another is to have more such programmes in which truly independent politicians and commentators may have a bash: thus one welcomes Gallery, BBC's new and lively forum for young, untrammelled pundits and politicos. It trails clouds of the Oxford Union, but is really none the worse for that: junior pomposity makes a change after senior.
The slowest of serials, The World of Tim Frazer (BBC), has finally ground to a halt after eighteen episodes. The formula involved a catchy tune, long, dead stretches of dialogue in which people discussed golf and baths and the weather, interrupted by occasional rather perfunctory melodrama, with a characterless hero endowed by Jack Hedley with a certain roadhouse charm. Over in the World of Robert Fraser, ATV have started a new Saturday night serial, The Avengers, which is the sort of thing they do rather well: plot about a doctor out to avenge murdered fiancee which unnervingly turns super- ficially ordinary life into a nightmare.
As everyone knows by now, Sydney Newman's ABC Armchair Theatre eventually became so successful that its time was cut by half (oh, the beauties of planning in the World of R. F.!), but at least ATV's replacement, Drama 61, got off to a cracking start with Reginald Rose's The Cruel Hour, a piece about a new French CO who must decide whether or not to torture a fifteen-year-old Algerian rebel for vital informa- tion. The play was marred by the unnecessary interpolation of the officer's own softy son, but it was very well acted by Marius Goring, Peter Arne and George Pravda, and the first line might be commended as a model of TV-writing craft. The CO is being shown a houseful of murdered loyalists, when his lieutenant comments, 'This isn't a very pleasant way to spend your first day in Algeria, sir.' Thirty seconds 'gone, one line spoken, and already a full-scale theme has been stated and got under way.
Previous page
