Take a high stool, then add a roll neck – and you’ve got a show!
This week, grumpy critic Milton Shulman disliked Perry Como, Val Doonican, Rolf Harris, Julie Felix and Millicent Martin
This article contains references to a now-disgraced TV star
The most immutable, unchangeable, orthodox, settled, transfixed and stubborn form of TV is in the field of light entertainment.
Symbolic of the rooted thinking in the world of variety TV was that revolving stage in the Palladium Show which want on turning with its load of waving chorus girls until even Lew Grade must have grown dizzy at the sight of it.
Such modest deviations in technique that have emerged over the decodes inevitably result in a rash of imitations that never know when to stop.
Perry Como achieved fame in America because of a relaxed throw-away style of delivery and presentation. Since then entertainers in roll-neck sweaters have been relaxing so much their backbones are in danger of becoming vestigial remnants.
The stool
Another modest innovation in the Perry Como Show was the high stool. The result is that the stool has now become the inevitable prop for signalling a friendly informal atmosphere.
When entertainers or singers want to chat cosily to each other or to the audience, they draw up a stool. No one ever sits in a chair and even standing up has become slightly suspect.
It is by such mini advances — hardly the width of the merest G-string — that TV musical shows inch themselves into the future. Compared to the changes that take place in TV drama, comedy shows, current affairs programmes and documentaries, the variety programme is the reluctant dinosaur of the small screen.
Even the annual report of the Independent Television Authority — a document notoriously reticent about casting the slightest shadow of disapproval on anything seen on Channel 9 — has used the words “stale” and “disappointing” about the commercial companies’ output of light entertainment and called for “positive corrective measures.”
But the rot seems to have seeped into the BBC as well. There it may have started with the Val Doonican Show.
Mr. Doonican, a friendly Irishman with a soothing, singing voice, managed to sweep this brand of relaxed amiability into the top ratings.
The show was remarkable only for the intensity of its cosiness. Surrounded by a group of perpetually grinning singers, the highlights of the programme were the choral singing of very old, very familiar, very childish folk songs.
The rest were the usual guests, the usual badinage, the usual toothy greetings. No effort was made to provide anything imaginative in the way of choreography, decor, script or style. Indeed an ideal programme to sleep by.
Since this was apparently what the public wanted, the BBC has repeated the formula in The Rolf Harris Show. Here, if possible, wholesomeness is an even more aggressive quality than it was in the Val Doonican show.
Mr. Harris, bearded and twinkling, has all the by-gosh, gee-whiz charm of a cousin from Australia. He is always overwhelmed by the magnificence of his guests (“They are really international stars … Come on, a tremendous burst of applause for our next guest.”)
His patter is artificially folksy. “I was thinking recently about giraffes,” he tells us, as an excuse for an infantile song about his wish to be able to talk to the animals.
His jokes are simply cringe-making. “Where’s your iambic pentameter?” “I thought you were going to bring it,” is a more-brilliant-than-usual exchange.
Or something like the closing lines of his last show: “My little girl — she’s only four — came back from school with a scruffy little rag doll worth £12 10s … (pause) … Well, it was worth £12 10s. because she swapped her bicycle for it.”
The centre-piece of the programme is Mr. Harris demonstrating his ability to paint with a huge brush on a broad, grey canvas.
Picasso
As he pom-poms, boo-hoops to himself in a humming undertone, the audience settles back as if they were watching nothing less than Picasso at work. What emerges are rather mediocre greeting card scenes whose only distinction is the audacity it takes to demonstrate so tiny a gift so brazenly.
The other staple ingredient of The Rolf Harris Show is a leaping, cavorting group of young men and girts whose idea of a dance routine is to chase each other around the studio or bend forward in a row grinning archly at the camera.
Indeed, the whole show smacks of well-intentioned amateurism. Since Mr. Harris cannot sing, dance, draw or tell jokes very well, it is only natural that he should be surrounded by an atmosphere revelling in its own mediocrity. It is all bland and harmless in much the same way as having a bath in semolina pudding.
A step-up in imagination — but not much — is Once More With Felix on BBC-2. Miss Julie Felix, her aquiline face framed in a cascade of black hair, has presumably been given this show because she is sincere with a guitar.
More often than not her repertoire consists of protest songs that for me seem to have exactly the same melody.
Her pretty face takes on an aura of social significance as she rhythmically tries to break our hearts about the Mexican deportees who are chased “like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves” and die in the following sequence: in the hills, in the mountains and in the plains.
Stamina
It’s never easy to whip oneself up into a proper mood of indignation about such folksy injustice when the guests on the programme tend to be lighthearted puppeteers or raconteurs seemingly indifferent to “trying for the sun” or “not having a name when you reach the aeroplane.”
There is a spasmodic attempt to use bits of film to illustrate some of the songs — almost always showing Miss Felix either running or walking along beeches or hot southern streets — but aside from establishing Miss Felix’s stamina, they add little to the general quality of the entertainment.
Piccadilly Palace, on Channel 9, starred Millicent Martin and Bruce Forsyth and if it offered up nothing new, it at least looked as if more effort and money had gone into it than the Rolf Harris and Julie Felix shows put together.
Gloss
The script had some good situation sketches and some of Millicent Martin’s dancing numbers were very effective. It was basically the same tired stuff, but a gloss of professionalism made it more palatable.
On the Continent, this type of light entertainment has acquired a brightness and vivacity and flair that no one over here seems capable of matching.
Film is imaginatively used to extend the barriers of the studio. Dance numbers are organised to please the eye and take advantage of all the electronic aids that are now available to directors.
Although British TV leads the world in most fields, it has consistently trudged along in the rear as far as musical variety is concerned. It may well be that the British public is content with nothing better than soporific comforters to while away the hours until the grave, but that is no reason why TV executives should be content to give them nothing better.
