Television
Too famous to name
Wendy Cope
0 n Saturday I thought of taping the whole of Don Giovanni (Channel 4) and keeping it. But my plan changed when I noticed that the last hour clashed with Heimat (BBC 2), which is unmissable, once you've started following it. I regret not having watched it until episode three of the current repeat. Episode six will be shown this Saturday and there are five more after that. Every week there is a short summary explaining what has been going on.
There's nothing else at the moment that I'd mind missing, though The Bill (ITV) is tolerable. The best thing about this is the signature tune. It is especially pleasing in the closing sequence, when four police feet stroll along the pavement in time with the music. There are some quite interesting characters. One of the uniformed police- men is having a convincing nervous break- down. Now and again he bumps into the alcoholic detective sergeant in the gents and they have a quick swig together. There is also a lot of shouting and tearing around in cars and sometimes it is difficult to understand what is going on. But each half-hour programme, so far, has been a story in itself, so those of us who didn't figure it out can always make a fresh start next time.
For the last couple of weeks I've been watching EastEnders (BBC 1) and was appalled to learn that Willmott-Brown has turned into a rapist. During my last phase of watching EastEnders he seemed quite a nice person, but that was about 18 months ago. Willmott-Brown is the token middle- class immigrant (a bit long-in-the-tooth, I think, to be called a yuppie). When he was revealed to be a monster it was difficult not to feel that there should be at least one nice middle-class character in the programme, for the sake of balance. However, I had forgotten about Colin, the gay designer. He turned up in Thursday's programme and he is still nice, so perhaps it is all right. The female characters are almost all very irritating and it's hard to decide which of them is worst. Dot Cotton's voice is one of the reasons I don't watch the programme more often, but Dot is just a silly old gossip, not much liked by the others. The self-righteous Michelle, whom I rather think we are supposed to admire, annoys me even more.
There is a new programme on ITV called Classmates and my newspaper said it might become a cult. Twenty or so grown-ups were gathered together in a classroom with presenter Sarah Kennedy. They began to reminisce about the subject of tonight's programme, without naming her. When she was at school she often used to jump on her desk and sing, she was really zany, and when she was put in charge of selling the biscuits she used to give them away. Eddie sent her a valentine when she was 13. Now she's a big star of television and the theatre. 'And do we love her?' asked Sarah Kennedy.
'Yes,' she said quickly, as if afraid of a different answer. The 20 grown-ups joined in the chorus, 'Yes we do.'
Who could it be? The door opened and in she came. It was that actress who used to be the cleaner in Hi-De-Hi. After a while her surname was mentioned. Pollard. That's right. Then her parents came on screen and said her Christian name. Su. I gather from someone else's review that that is the correct way to spell it. Last time I copied another critic, it turned out he had made a mistake. There's a lesson there that we all ought to have learned in the class- room.
Anyway, Su Pollard is a likeable ex- trovert, who carried the programme along without too much embarrassment. At one point there was a guest appearance on film, by a famous American singer she'd had a crush on in her schooldays. He is so famous that there was no need for anyone to say his name at all, nor was it mentioned in the credits. I still haven't the faintest idea who he was.
Wendy Cope will be reading and talking about her poetry in Living Poet at 9.20 p.m. on Radio 3 this Sunday.
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