Television
Saboteurs
Richard Ingrams
One of my few natural advantages is that I very seldom miss anything and subsequently regret the fact. For example I knew at once when listening to friends who had seen Star Wars in America that I would miss it, and so it turned out. Similarly when people said 'Yes but you really ought to see Close Encounters, I somehow managed to miss that as well. Missing is not deliberately avoiding something, it is just not getting round to it. All these years I had missed Citizen Kane. I heard in the distance the excited talk of film fans, I read from time to time the dutiful references in the papers to the genius of Orson Welles, but I always had a feeling at the back of my mind that this film was not all that it was cracked up to be. Finally, a week or so ago, I saw it on the BBC. It just isn't any good, in spite of all the clever effects. And the same goes for Monty Python. Again, I missed this when it first came on and I missed it when it was repeated. Everyone else was laughing hysterically but I just knew that I wouldn't find it funny. Now it is being repeated yet again on BBC-2. At last on Monday I came face to face with Monty Python. Again, I had been right. It's junk.
Another programme which 1 shall miss is the Birds Fall Down by Dame Rebecca West. I have, left me confess, several times seen a trailer for this adaptation of the Dame's novel, in which a man with a beard tells another man with a longer and bushier beard that he is the victim of a conspiracy. Somehow this little vignette has been enough to deter me. As C.J. might remark I didn't get where I am today by watching men with beards telling each other that they're victims of 9 conspiracy. One of the rules of television is that if there is anything really interesting or funny going on, it will not be shown on the screen. The best example of this recently was when the BBC spent months and months investigating the Thorpe story and then decided not to show a single foot of film. I think that, shortly, a similar ban will be put on Edward Heath' The latter's remorseless determination t° sabotage his successor Mrs Thatcher is far and away the funniest and most inter" esting aspect of contemporary politics. For that reason the broadcasting authorities under pressure from the, Tories and possibly even Labour, will' soon clamp down on Mr Heath. At the moment he is enjoying his final fling. I caught him on Monday's World M Action ensconsed with a number of vet.): deferential Lancashire miners one °' whom said daringly at the end of the programme 'If we have to choose bet: ween you and Maggie we will have you • There was one of those pointful moments during the half hour when someone blurts, out the truth to the embarrassment of al' concerned. This came when a Doncaster man asked how they could expect work, ers to maintain wage increases of 5 per cen` when their own Union officials were giving themselves 30 per cent. 'All right, you've made your point' Mr Heath impatiently riposted trying to steer the discussion back to the broader issues.
I have, on occasion, had cause to coal' pliment Peter France and his Everytnall programme which now constitutes the BBC's Flying God Slot. Too often, however, France takes refuge in that greY area where Christianity meets modern left wing political thought and tries t° find a consensus. On Sunday the ramme attempted gallantly to show that the leaders of the Guerrilla Warm Rhodesia were all putting their Christian beliefs, imbibed at mission schools, int° action. The Christian ideals of justice and equality, it seems, are what lie behind the vigorous assault on Smith's tottering regime. However Mr Robert Mugabe who was interviewed by a very wetlooking woman did not quite bear out the BBC's delightful theory. Asked what benefit he had derived from his Catholide upbringing he replied promptly, allA ominously, 'discipline'. The awkwar' question of how he, or other guerrillas, reconciled the beneficial influence of oils' sionaries with a subsequent determination to kill as many of them as possible was not answered, let alone broached.
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