Television
Uninformative
Richard Ingrams
For some months, or it may be years, Granada's World in Action has been in the doldrums, churning out a number of dreary and irrelevant programmes. So I was quite pleased to see the hour-long effort on Monday about Operation Countryman, even though it meant the disappearance of my favourite programme, Wentworth B.A. The star was the former director of Opera- tion Countryman Mr Arthur Hambleton, ex-head of the Dorset police. Mr Hambleton, filmed in his garden, was billed as the honest copper whose job had been to try and sort out the rotten apples in Lon- don. Now thoroughly disillusioned he launched a ferocious attack not only on his obstructors in the City Police and at Scotland Yard but on the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington, and the Home Secretary for aiding and abetting the Yard's cover-up. Mrs That- cher's pathetic response to a House of Commons question about police corruption — she said that six police officers had been killed this year in the course of duty — was used to great effect at the end of the pro- gramme. To shelter behind the dead in this way in order to get yourself off the hook of a difficult parliamentary question smacked of real humbug. Sooner or later Whitelaw and his Leaderene may come a real cropper over this issue of police corruption.
To begin with I didn't warm much to Eric
When you press this button it hurls abuse at other drivers.' Fenby, the narrator of Song of Farewell (Yorkshire). Fenby, now in his seventies, who worked for six years (1928-34) with Frederick Delius, looks a bit like a bank manager with thick glasses and a face that gives little away. It was only after about 20 minutes when he said he considered himself a loner and had once thought of entering a monastery that I realised his offputting manner was the product of a deep reserve. This is often the reason why people aren't good on the telly. In fact, Fenby had a very good story to tell, of how he as a young musician from Scarborough volunteered to act as amanuensis to the blind and dying composer, a gaunt El Greco figure then liv- ing in Grez sur Loing in Northern France. So many programmes about 'the arts' tell one nothing that it was most refreshing to hear someone describing the creative pro- cess at first hand — in this case Delius dic- tating the opening bars of his Song of Sum- mer and relating it to the sea, the cliffs and the cry of gulls. A little Delius goes a long way but Fenby got it right when he said that the music conveyed 'a sense of parting and a spirit of transience that none of us can evade'. It was this heavy nostalgic quality in the music that made it the perfect accom- paniment for Fenby's return journey to Grez and his memories of an experience that altered the course of his life.
After this fascinating biographical sketch, Robert Hardy's Gordon of Khartoum (BBC1) struck a phony and pretentious note. Borrowing his technique from the Welsh actor Kenneth Griffith, whose recent marathon on Tom Paine I greatly enjoyed, Hardy travelled all over the world, donning a variety of suits and blazers, and reciting his commentary on ships, on trains or while wandering about in old ruins. Like Donald Sinden, Hardy believes that enthusiasm can be best conveyed by speaking in an excited way with half-shut eyes and furrowed brow. But neither this mannered technique nor the variety of the locations could disguise the fact that the commentary was thin stuff. I hate to think how many thousands of pounds the BBC must have spent on this programme, when they would have done better just to film A.J.P. Taylor sitting in his armchair in Camden Town. In the cir- cumstances, Gordon's last mysterious message before the Mandi's men swarmed into his palace seemed very appropriate to the BBC — 'You sent me no information though you have lots of money'.
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