Television
PERHAPS I hit upon a very atypical selection of programmes both sound and TV during the past few days and the impressions gathered from them may not he a very reliable indicator; but the suspicion grows that, by and large (use- ful phrase, that), ITV tries—perhaps not al- ways successfully—to treat the customer all the time ag an adult. Or at least that was the way it worked out with most of what I saw; and by contrast some of the ideas released and the verbiage in which they were clothed, on BBC programmes, suggested that the elder partner's affairs are run (again, by and large) by people who believe in keeping everything as far removed from reality as possible. It's as much a matter of atmosphere, suggestion, im- plication, as of the actual content, either verbal or visual, of the programmes. In the immortal phrase 'It's not what they say, but the way they say it.' It may well be that the basic differ- ence between the two sets of programmes is simply that the BBC sincerely believes that if
we don't all live in and conform to the estab- lished conventions of South Kensington—well, we all want to; whereas ITV is willing to assume it can find interested viewers among people of a thousand different social gradings.
Mainly for Women (BBC) is the archetype of the programme which chatters away end- lessly about the trivia which are assumed to occupy the exclusive attention of the females in the 'middle-middle' and 'upper-middle' in- come groups. If one didn't read that different names write, produce and appear in these visions of a world that exists only in the imagination of a certain type of lady novelist, one would swear that every programme is a concoction of the same team of writers and actors. The operative adjective is 'wonderful' (cakes, cooking, a dress, our holidays, etc.): if it's anything to do with food or drink, 'the men just love it' : and the justification for the activity being discussed—whether bringing up triplets or bicycling to Bulgaria—is 'it's rather fun.' It might be rather fun if someone at BBC planning HQ were to find out what other kinds of female listeners and viewers existed— and catered accordingly.
A good programme on ITV continued the investigation of 'The Peaceful Atom,' radio- active isotopes were lured out of the scientists' keeping and entertainingly and instructively made to reveal themselves and show their paces. The questions were simple and obvious, and the answers equally so. On another even- ing ITV showed an interview (Visitor of the Day) with a gentleman (white) from Africa who had some pointed and passionate remarks to make about the Central African Federation; what he said (and how he said it), unrehearsed and unbriefed, got across as much as has been said on acres of newsprint recently on this future political surprise-packet. ITV was quick off the mark in dealing with the Princess Margaret news item on Monday, the whole treatment of this subject suggesting that there i3 a broader-minded attitude than the 'official' one, and that it could be expressed without vulgarity or insipidity.
Again on ITV Michael Dyne's adaptation of Henry James's A Garden in the .Sea (October 27) got marvellously close to the spirit of The Aspern Papers; despite its restricted sets and some rather careless acting at times, it made into an acceptable TV drama, with Margaret Halstan and Rosalie Crutchley as the two Bordereau females splendidly realised. But of course it raised again the whole question of the permissible style and content of the 'pure' TV play—which isn't going to emerge for a long time yet, either on BBC or ITV, unless play- wrights can concoct their works in closest col- laboration with studio producers.
A. V. COTON
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