SINCE this year began I have written 20 weekly pieces on television. Looking through them the other day to answer a reader’s letter I was surprised to find how much they concentrated on BBC programmes and how little on those seen on commercial TV.

In 1968 I have only written three columns which concerned themselves primarily with ITV programmes. Two of them dealt with the ethics of certain discussion techniques on The Frost Programme and The Eamonn Andrews Show.

Contracts

The other was an attack on the Government and the ITA for the arbitrary method by which they made certain people rich through their handouts of commercial TV contracts.

The BBC, on the other hand, has been pushed through the critical sieve with a vengeance. I have vigorously questioned its obsession with sports; its current policy of attracting viewers by plumping for peak-time mediocrity; its curious view that no more jokes about Mr. Harold Wilson should be permitted on light entertainment programmes.

The individual BBC programmes I have discussed have included At The Eleventh Hour, Dr. Barnard Faces His Critics, Talkback, Man Alive, Till Death Us Do Part, the Val Doonican and Rolf Harris shows, the Smothers Brothers, Don’t Count The Candles, Dee Time and a Spoonful of Sugar.

Now the only thing that these programmes have in common is that none of them has been consistently on TV for over three years. Even Man Alive, which is the oldest, has recently undergone a face-lift which changed much of its style and approach.

By comparison programmes on Channel 9 tend to cling to schedules like desperate limpets. It now requires on my part a fierce effort of will to switch over from the BBC to the independent network.

Circus

The general impression of the commercial channel is that of a grey, unenterprising circus where the ringmaster announces the same old acts – year after year — because there are always enough customers to fill up the tent.

Searching for a fresh idea, for a programme that hasn’t been grinding on for six years or longer, for something that isn’t an almost exact replica of a hackneyed formula, is a task that has long ago exhausted my patience.

Although the ITA has never divulged its reasons for demoting Rediffusion as a programme contractor, one of the factors that they must have considered was the tenacious manner in which they stuck to programmes like Double Your Money, Take Your Pick and No Hiding Place for something like 12 to 13 years.

Now that Thames TV has decided that it will not be taking Double Your Money after July of this year, Mr. Hughie Green has said that he is shocked that a minority of people should be able to take off a programme which is so popular with the majority.

One would think that after having had the longest run in TV — a run that has seen him mature from youth to middle-age with his grinning bon-homie as glacially intact as ever— Mr. Green would have bowed out gracefully with a few grateful words about the powers of tolerance and resignation of the British public.

Instead, Mr. Green is now arguing that, since some 6,000,000 homes still tune into his programme, that it is almost anti-social for a “minority” to take him off.

Who this “minority” might be and how they managed to get their views to Thames TV, is not explained by Mr. Green. Since decisions of this kind are usually taken by minorities of one, two or three men who control programmes in the various companies, does Mr. Green think there ought to be a “majority” of 6,000,001 executives before anyone dare drop Double Your Money?

Justified?

Ot course. Mr. Green will claim that the mere size of his audience justifies its continued existence. That is evidence of “what the public wants” — and who dare defy the will of statistics?

But if the public is offered no choice, how do we really know what it wants? If Double Your Money continues to occupy a prime slot for 13 years, how do we know that there is not a better panel or quit game in somebody’s imagination that would not be more popular than Double Your Money?

If the BBC had not taken off some very popular comedy shows, how would we ever have known that Steptoe and Son or Till Death Us Do Part would be more popular?

And has Mr. Green ever considered that stultifying effect that programmes like his, with their unchanged routines year after year, has on the creative talent that has to put them out?

And has he ever thought of what these long-running programmes do to audiences? It cocoons them in a world of routine where their ability to make an individual choice is eventually atrophied.

Conditioning minds to be unselective, undemanding and unadventurous is hardly the purpose of TV. Yet that is what its end result would be if programmes were never changed, never altered just because they were preferred by millions too lazy or mentally unequipped to do anything but enjoy what they enjoyed before.

Eamonn

Now every commercial company has had its share of programmes that have on too long for anybody’s eventual good. ATV had Emergency Ward 10. ABC looks like turning the Eamonn Andrews Show into another runner in the eternity stakes.

But the company that has displayed the most resistance to change on the commercial network is, surprisingly enough, Granada.

I say “surprisingly” because Granada has always had a reputation as an aggressive, social-conscious, vigorous programme company. It is a reputation that needs some drastic re-justifying.

Granada’s main contributions to the network include Coronation Street (over seven years old). What the Papers Say (12 years old). All Our Yesterdays (seven-and-a-half years old). University Challenge (six years old). Cinema (tour years old) and World In Action (five years old).

Individually, there is nothing much wrong with any of these programmes. They all tackle their particular subjects with reasonable professionalism and skill.

But to have any company content with a schedule in which over 80 pc of its main programmes are between four and 12 years old indicates a smugness or apathy which is somewhat disturbing.

The dynamic Sidney Bernstein who will, unbelievable as it may seem, be 70 next January, may be preparing the end of some of these hoary programmes when the new contracts are taken up in August [Actually the end of July – Ed].

Whether Mr. Bernstein will be leading his company into the new TV era remains to be seen since, according to the new 1TA regulations, all company directors must retire at the age of 70, unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify their staying.

A positive demonstration of his continuing youth and vigour would be the drastic pruning of some of the ageing programme vines that are now choking his TV schedules.

The post The dreariness of the long-distance runners appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Syndicated to newspapers on 27 April 1968

MR. PAUL FOX was made Controller of Programmes of BBC-1 on June 18, 1967.

In his new post Mr. Fox has something like £15m. [£223m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] to spend. He is responsible for putting out more TV programmes than any other organisation in the world, and he supervises the production of more hours of entertainment than Lew Grade, Sidney Bernstein, the Boulting Brothers, Darryl Zanurk, J. Arthur Rank and Sir Philip Warter all put together.

What qualifications has he for such a formidable task? He was editor of BBC’s Sportsview for six years, until 1961. He edited Panorama and was head of BBC Current Affairs. Thus, his background has largely been concentrated on sports and news.

When he was appointed, Mr. Fox modestly claimed that his personal influence on BBC-1’s programme schedules would not be much in evidence before sometime in 1968.

Philosophy

He has now had 10 months to assert himself, and I think it is fair to appraise the trends in programming he appears to have set in motion.

Such comments of Mr. Fox’s that I have seen reported would seem to show that the acquisition of viewers plays an exceedingly prominent part in his philosophy of broadcasting.

Soon after he took over he indicated that be would give the ITV a much tougher battle for viewers, and last December, be was concerned about the audience ratio of 60-40 which the commercial channel had in their favour on Sunday nights.

To correct this dire state of affairs, he offered the British public a peak-time fare which began with the Smothers Brothers followed by Dr. Finlay’s Casebook, and ended with a long, feature film.

Since the Smothers Brothers were a disastrous flop, it must be assumed that Mr. Fox’s much-hoped for switch of viewers did not take place.

There has been some more schedule juggling, and BBC-1 now offers us on Sunday night — to woo us away from Channel 9’s delectable treat of The Saint (a repeat), The Big Show (variety) and a feature film – The Andy Williams Show, The First Lady (a series about a female councillor) and a feature film.

The end result of this fierce competitiveness is that there are only a marginal difference in quality of programme between the two major channels and that any discriminating viewer will be driven to the nearest pub or book.

Not content with turning the week-end into a battlefield for ignorant insensitive and complacent scalps, Mr Fox has apparently turned his diligent drive tor viewers to the week-days as well.

It you eliminate the daily 24 Hours programme from BBC-1 (which has a rough equivalent on the commercial channel with the News at Ten), there is practically nothing to choose between BBC-1 and ITV as far as the aim, tone quality and spirit of their programmes is concerned.

Monday’s schedule offered us Z-Cars, The Dick Emery Show, Panorama, Professional Boxing, Dance Date. To-night you have The Virginian, Mum’s Boys, The Wednesday Play (a repeat) and the European Cup. On Friday it’s A Spoonful of Sugar, The Newcomers, Man from UNCLE, Comedy Playhouse, Miss England and Tennis.

Bland

There are 28 hours of peak-time viewing on BBC-1 every weeks (ie, 6-30 pm to 10-30 pm) and, excluding the news and 24 Hours, the proportion of time devoted to what I might loosely call “non-entertainment” programmes (ie, drama, ballet, opera, documentaries, discussions, music, art, social and political comment) is about four hours per week.

In other words, for its mass viewing audiences BBC-1 now feels that 80 pc of its prime time should be devoted to bland, innocuous, unconcerned, uninvolved, soporific, uninformative, desensitising programmes.

Its tendency to move serious programmes to off-peak hours — which has always been the policy of the commercial channel — shows that there will soon be no difference at all between BBC-1 and ITV.

Since Mr. Fox has taken over we have seen the disappearance of the satire snows, the end of controversial comedies like Till Death Us Do Part, more a conventional plays into The Wednesday Play slot and an annual schedule which boasts of 1,000 hours of sport, or almost 25 per cent of its total output.

What seems to be happening is that BBC-1, like commercial TV, is opting out of a responsible position in shaping the taste, values and aspirations of the British public and is contenting itself with playing the role of a national yo-yo.

Deterioration

Its hierarchy can probably rationalise this position by claiming that BBC-2 can offer the more discriminating and more sensitive viewer all the serious, cultural, non-entertainment programmes programmes they want.

One can even envisage that when BBC-2 becomes more popular — when it shares a larger proportion of the audience — it, too, will deem it necessary to cater for bigger and bigger audiences, like its rivals, and eventually succumb to the temptation to become just floss and froth on the fabric of our national life.

This deterioration in the impact and power of TV is just what those with vested interests in the status quo would like.

Politicians, establishment figures, groups opposed to change and reform, have watched with a baleful eye the increasing intrusion of TV in their domains of influence and power.

Nothing would please them better than the cutting back of this involvement of TV in the central issues of our time. And the best way to do it is, of course, to turn the medium into visual chewing gum; innocuous waffle; soporific pap unworthy of the attention of those seriously concerned with our affairs. This has almost been achieved in America.

But TV is, for good or ill, a medium more powerful than any that exists in society to-day. It becomes the duty of those who run it to refuse to have it converted into a national bubble-bath. They must claw, fight, scream and shout for the right to be responsible and involved.

Serious

The BBC — because it is a national institution financed by the people’s money — must always be at least as serious as a popular newspaper. There is not a popular newspaper in the land that does not devote at least 40 per cent its non-commercial space to a discussion of the serious, demanding and involved aspects of the day. And in prominent places like its front page!

If TV is used by governments and those in authority as a new opium for the masses; if it portrays a bland, reassuring, comforting picture of life; if it is not used properly as an outlet for all the doubts, arguments, controversies and fears that rage through our lives, then watch for the explosion when disillusion sets in.

Some of the violence and anger of Negro rioters in America has been attributed to the contrast between the miserable reality of their existence and the chummy, benevolent, affluent, fictitious picture of American life seen on the small screed.

Similarly, the German students have been rioting because they claim that not only the Springer Press, but TV as well has provided the people with a false illusion of what is going on about them.

Mr. Paul Fox and Lord Hill, who joined the BBC as its chairman, have responsibilities towards the British public which, at the moment, they show few signs of either understanding or grasping.

The post A sad, sad look at the sad, sad decline of BBC-1 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

THE SADDEST SPECTACLE on the contemporary TV scene is the depressing deterioration of American TV. Conditioned by the fear and caution of advertisers, popular programmes are sinking ever deeper into a morass of blancmange entertainment.

With the exception of an occasional current affairs programme, the American networks operate on the principle that it is their function to provide the least offence to the greatest number.

It does not overly concern them that in so doing they are also being extremely offensive to most of the intelligent people in their country.

Nor does it bother them that by being aggressively innocuous they are actively helping to cement into their society all its iniquities and inequalities.

The result of this policy of banalities for the masses is that most discerning, sensitive and intelligent Americans view the medium with contempt. They appear on it sceptically work for it reluctantly and deride it both privately and publicly.

Pressures

One of the most heartening aspects of British TV is that, as yet, the rot that comes from catering to advertising pressures has not bitten very deep into our own programming philosophy.

And, because of a self-imposed limitation on the amount of American material transmitted — usually amounting to about 15 per cent of its total output — British TV has been forced to produce most of its own programmes which, naturally reflect our own customs, habits, values and ideals. The result has been that most people in this country infinitely prefer British programmes to almost anything that comes from America.

American series or variety shows rarely reach the top ten status — not only nationally, but even in the regions. Many weeks go by when not a single American show appears in the top twenty national favourites.

The fact that BBC and the ITV companies still go on buying American material is not because they think the public will prefer them to British shows, but because they usually cost less than producing an original programme over here.

The gap between American popular taste and our own native preferences has been sharply illustrated by the fate of the Smothers Brothers. After only nine programmes they have been dropped by the BBC from their schedules. Two more programmes remain to be shown.

‘Daring’

In America, difficult as it is for anyone over here to understand, the Smothers Brothers are not only the most popular variety show but also have a reputation for producing daring, satirical and controversial TV.

1 have assiduously watched most of their transmitted programmes and I must confess that the mystery of their appeal has consistently escaped me.

In a clean-cut way, I suppose they represent to Middle West moms an ideal of the all-American brothers. Dick, the sharper, more astute one, is amiably patient with the gangling inarticulateness of his brother Tommy, whose lovableness is demonstrated by his awkwardness with both his grammar and his guitar.

The show’s shape is traditional in the mustiest sense of that word. There are guests who are fulsomely introduced and who take part in the inevitable set sketches in which the feeblest of jokes are greeted by almost maniacal laughter from a studio audience.

The level of the jokes and audience appreciation can be gauged by the fact that in a recent skit about the French Revolution the heartiest laugh came when Marie Antoinette, on being told that the people were crying for bread, replied, “Let them eat cake!”

Although eight writers were credited with the script, I did not notice Marie Antoinette’s name among them. Perhaps de Gaulle will take it up. Since we produce a host of variety shows far funnier and wittier than this lame display of simple gush — Morecambe and Wise, Bruce Forsyth, Millicent Martin, Benny Hill, Ken Dodd — it is not surprising that British viewers have been less that enchanted with the Smothers Brothers.

But what amazes me is that in America the Smothers Brothers are hailed as prophets of adventurous and satirical TV. And it is not an idle reputation, since this year alone three advertisers have stopped sponsoring the show because they consider its jokes too blue and its political satire too controversial.

Yet nothing I have seen could, by our standards, be considered remotely objectionable. Compared to our own satire shows or to something like Till Death Us Do Part, the Smothers Brothers are milk-sodden gruel for the toothless.

Sketches

Occasionally there are mild sketches about things like safety in automobiles or treatment of the sick, but nothing more pointed than a gag ever emerges and the atmosphere is always too cosily friendly that an insult could only be interpreted as a compliment.

The sharpest comment I ever heard about anything remotely resembling a social problem was when someone was asked how people could be discouraged from staying in hospitals. “Bad food, ugly nurses and as a last resort we keep the bed pans in the Frigidaire,” was the answer

If this type of innocuous banter can drive advertisers away from sponsoring programmes — and ultimately extinguish them from the air — then American TV will have imposed upon itself a censorship which in its ultimate effects, will be as damaging to freedom in the United States as controlled TV has already damaged freedom in France, Rhodesia and the Soviet Union.

The post A look at the musty humour of the Smothers Brothers appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Syndicated to newspapers on 24 February 1968

THE fascination at Alf Garnett, the monstrous hero of the BBC’s Till Death Us Do Part, lay in his ability to act as a distorting mirror in which we could watch our meanest attributes reflected large and ugly.

Like some boil on the back at the neck that one cannot resist stroking or touching, this social aberration demanded the nation’s attention.

Some 18 million viewers — half of Britain’s adult population — watched him weekly wallowing in the hates and fears and prejudices most of us have tucked away in some genteel niche of our psyche.

Alf’s views on coons, kikes and wags; his reflections on Labour Party politicians; his suspicion of anything new like transplant operations, his ignorant superstitions, his insensitivity to beauty, his blatant hypocrisy can be seen and heard most days in most pubs, factories and boardrooms in the land.

Aggressive

Even his conventional virtue — his faith, his patriotism, his loyalties — have all been acquired tor the wrong reasons. His religion is motivated by fear at a vengeful God; his admiration of the Queen, by snobbery; his passion for West Ham, by a need for aggressive self-fulfilment.

Fortunately, there are few of us who possess all of Alf’s bulging portmanteau of hates and prejudices. But it is only the saint among us who does not share at least one.

The difference between Alf and most of us is that he brandishes his decadent and violent ideas in the fout-mouthed linguistic setting that suited them best. He was too uncultivated and ignorant to realise that if he disguised them under a veneer of propriety, they would have been acceptable in some of our best drawing-rooms.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of Alf’s existence is that he should be a member of the working-classes. Ever since Rousseau’s “noble savage,” liberal humanitarians have believed that given the right social conditions, the best in humanity would emerge from the lowest orders.

They had long ago given up the middle-classes and the aristocracy as too corrupted by self-interest to ever strive unduly for a broadening of the human spirit.

It would be expected that a Prussian Junker like Ludendorff could be described as “a man blind in spirit. He had never seen a flower bloom, never heard a bird sing, never watched the sun set.”

And it was natural that the epitome of a nation’s xenophobia, narrow-mindedness, obtuse attitudes should have been that red-fared, bloated representative of the upper middle-class, Colonel Blimp.

But the proletariat was better than that. So the Russian Revolution and the Welfare State set out to prove. Well, we know what happened in Russia.

Could it be possible that decades of literacy, universal suffrage, full employment, trade union protection and governmental paternalism could spawn a monster like Alf Garnett?

Sadly, it is only too true. The millions who laughed at Alf Garnett weekly knew only too well that it was true. And it is in reminding us how far we still have to go before any Utopian ideals about ourselves and our society can be remotely realised that Johnny Speight’s creation has succeeded in providing on TV both a chastening and enlightening experience.

No one can deny that some of the recent episodes of Till Death Us Do Part showed signs of tired flair and exhausted imagination. But even the worst ones were funnier, more stimulating and more nerve-provoking than 95 per cent. of so-called TV comedy.

The nation owes it, creator Johnny Speight, and its cast, Warren Mitchell, Dandy Nichols, Anthony Booth and Una Stubbs, a debt of gratitude.

But when a series as significant as Till Death Us Do Part leaves the air, it is important that a critic investigates the nature of its going.

Smothered

Was Alf Garnett pushed off the BBC or did he die a creative natural death? If Johnny Speight is to be believed, Alf was smothered by an artistic climate in which he could not survive.

“We have been irritated by a number of idiotic and unreasonable cuts,” he said. “The trouble has been since Lord Hill’s arrival at the BBC and I could be the victim of new policies. I would write another series for the BBC but only it this censorship was stopped.”

What evidence, then, is there that Till Death Us Do Part has gone too far in its use of unseemly language, its derision of politicians, the monarchy, foreigners, its shocking of sensibilities over such topics as religion sex and the family?

Judged by viewing figures, only a tiny fraction of the nation has been shocked enough by the Garnett family to stop looking at them.

This has by no means deterred pressure groups, like the one of which Mrs. Mary Whitehouse is secretary, from blazing away at the programme as a disgrace to the nation and a potential source of corruption.

Because in a comic discussion about the beginnings of man, the words “your bloody God” and “that rubbish, the Bible” were used, Mrs. Whitehouse’s association has demanded that the BBC be prosecuted for blasphemy.

In the event of a prosecution, would Mrs. Mary Whitehouse or the BBC be right as to what shocks and disturbs the nation?

The BBC in its Talkback programme, has provided some evidence of where viewers stand on programmes that its critics claim go too far in the way of permissiveness about language and taboo subjects.

An audience of 100, scientifically selected from the London Area by an independent firm, represents a statistical sample of the population by age, class, sex and earning power.

On the right of TV to upset and occasionally offend the nation, 80 per cent. agreed that it had that right. Did Alf Garnett stimulate racial prejudice? Ninety-five per cent said No. Were references to the Queen by Alf Garnett offensive? Ninety-seven per cent, said No. Was there a need for an independent viewers’ council? Ninety-two per cent said No.

These statistics, then, would seem to put paid to Mrs. Whitehouse’s constant claim that her body represents a majority, or even a substantial, number of viewers.

An incidental aspect of this affair is the fact that so many commentators have assumed that Lord Hill’s presence at the BBC has been responsible for this new censorious atmosphere. It may not be true — Lord Hill should let us know — but when Prime Ministers appoint politicians to be overseers of our beliefs and morals, suspicions will always be there.

The post Viewers, the fact is you were looking at yourselves appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

THE inexplicable ups and downs of BBC comedy give a critic an acute feeling of vertigo. They run the gamut from hilarious genius to abysmal piffle with apparently bland indifference.

It hardly seems credible that the same administrative minds that wars ready to sponsor such comedy breakthrough as “Steptoe and Son” and “Till Death Us Do Part” should also be responsible for such trite concepts as “The Illustrated Weekly Hudd” and their latest effort, “The Reluctant Romeo.”

Centred around Leslie Crowther, a pleasant, knock-about comedian with some gift for mimicry. It concerned his efforts as an advertising man to get a contract to sell spaghetti.

His sales technique was to pretend to be the senior member of the firm and to promise a passionate Italian lady, who owned the spaghetti business, to marry her.

Suction

When the signorina turned up at the office determined to kiss Mr. Crowther like a frantic suction pump and with a quaint line of accepted dialogue like “I love you from the heart of my bottom,” the entire office joined in the conspiracy to hide Mr. Crowther’s real identity.

Stated baldly in this way there is a thin thread of discernible logic running through the plot But the scriptwriters, George Evans and Derek Collyer, were not concerned with situation comedy but situation anarchy.

Whatever relevance the story had to an advertising agency quickly vanished since the running about from office to office, the donning of beards and wigs, the mugging and the falling down, might just as readily have been set in a plutonium plant or a gherkin factory.

Such jokes as there were depended not upon wit but often upon sly sexual innuendoes given to innocuous lines by a tilt of an eyebrow or a leer in the voice.

Samples: “I just have to explain to this lady how I made her a mother … I can’t get enough of it … You should see the look that comes in my eyes when I’m stirring my dumplings.”

Dismal

The cheap and facile way of getting an easy laugh more and more betokens the inventive poverty of writers. Eric Fawcett, the producer, should force them to work harder by blue-pencilling most of these dismal excuses for gags.

“It’s my first real chance as a character actor,” Leslie Crowther is quoted as saying in the Radio Times. If be believes that he will believe anything.

What character? What chance? This is Mr. Crowther almost exactly as I remember him on the children’s programme, “Crackerjack,”‘ and not nearly so funny.

And if one were looking for an explanation to the erratic quality of BBC comedy snows, I think we have a clue here.

“The Reluctant Romeo” was probably conceived in some office in the Light Entertainment hierarchy at the BBC when someone brightly said: “Let’s find a vehicle for Leslie Crowther.”

Thereupon the story line, the dialogue, the environment was tailored for Mr. Crowther’s personality. Which meant finding something for a quick gagster, a painful mugger, an amiable face and a well-meaning blank.

The sensible thing, of course, would have been to allow two writers to develop a series with nothing but their imaginations to guide them and, then, get the right man to fit the script. Leslie Crowther if be could do it. Someone else, if he couldn’t.

“Steptoe and Son” were the creations of Galton and Simpson. Harry Corbett and Wilfred Brambell became successful TV comics because they adapted themselves to the characters of two junk merchants.

Johnny Speight conceived of the grotesque, hilarious family in “Till Death Us Do Part” and Warren Mitchell achieved instant fame as the unspeakable Alf Garnett.

Contours

In these two comic series, the most successful ever done on British TV, the funniest men on the small screen were merely versatile actors with no special reputation as comic geniuses before they fitted themselves into their roles.

Compare this record with those shows where the scripts were hand-tailored to fit the contours of comics like Roy Hudd, Lance Percival, Charlie Drake, Roy Kinnear and, now, Leslie Crowther. Desperate, all of them. Vehicles that became hearses. Laughter only good for canning.

Sometimes, of course, the technique works. Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd are honourable exceptions. But only great comics, like these two. can get away with it. There is a lesson here somewhere, I think. I hope.

The post The (too) easy laugh that kills so many TV comedy shows appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

NOW THAT JULY IS HERE the TV critic thinks inevitably of folding his tent and quietly stealing away. The chances are that the next six weeks will offer him only dross and desert.

Traditionally summer is the time of mindless effort on the part of both the BBC and ITV with old films, repeats and seaside pier standards filling the small screen.

It may have been a recognition of this pattern of entertainment that prompted the BBC into turning over an entire three weeks of its peak-time schedule to World Cup football.

On any other ground, it was the most arrogant and indefensible decision ever taken by a public corporation claiming to cater for the wishes and tastes of its viewers.

Having striven valiantly and expensively to attract viewers away from the commercial channel — and finally having achieved some success in this goal — this wanton disregard of audience preferences and this reckless rebuke to their loyalty will, I am sure, be very costly to the BBC in the long run.

But I find I am losing my temper when the object of the column, when I sat down to write, was to spread sweet compliments all round.

Many times

Having said many times in the past that British TV was the best in the world, I realise that I have not provided many illustrations to justify the claim.

But before the summer doldrums take over, I intend to place on record the kind of programmes — routine, unheralded, unpretentious — that could be found on your box over the past fortnight which could not be matched in terms of imagination and style by a fortnight’s output of any TV service anyhere else in the world.

NOT ONLY… BUT ALSO, which brings Dudley Moore and Peter Cook to BBC-1, manages to be as hilarious on second viewing as it when I first saw them on BBC-2.

Such gems as the parody of the Supercar puppet films, the delirious takeoff of that account of Laughton’s I Claudius, their visit to Heaven and Dudley’s grimace at the of ambrosia (“Not that creamed rice!”) blend with rare mastery the elements of wit and irreverence.

Occasionally they miscalculate. The item on the most boring man in the world was a failure because being bored is rarely funny, only dull.

If the BBC want to enter some of those annual festivals with a chance of winning, they should — if the rules permit — assemble the best items in Not Only… But Also, eliminate the interruptions by singing females (these musical moments no longer make any sense when there is no need for interludes in which costumes and sets can be changed), and startle the world with the quality of our best British humour.

The vulgarity of TILL DEATH US DO PART is as refreshing and startling in its comic concept as Steptoe and Son.

Johnny Speight’s scripts have taken over the formula of the crude, noisy, uninhibited working-class farce and injected into them an ironic, social comment that is almost breathtaking in this context.

Taboo words

I cannot recall ever hearing so many taboo words on one programme as I did in the episode dealing with Intolerance with Warren Mitchell and Anthony Booth shrieking ‘Mick! … Coon! … Yid!” at each other with unrepentant gusto.

Yet, in spite of this, the programme was not normally anger and wounding sentiments that would only hilarious, but managed to say something worthwhile about the stupidity and futility of racial prejudice.

For those wanting a unique and satisfying intellectual treat there was Jonathan Miller’s recreation of THE DEATH OF SOCRATES as told by Plato.

The modern setting — a sort of limbo in Edwardian England — came off beautifully although I would have thought that a further liberty might have been taken with the characters’ names. Somehow characters like Simmias and Xanthippe struck a jarring note when dressed to look like something out of Fanny By Gaslight.

Persuasive

But Leo McKern brought a massive dignity and overpowering persuasiveness to the arguments of Socrates while his resignation and the mundane preparations for his execution gave the event a wistful and autumnal climax.

And even that cornucopia in a single fortnight does not exhaust all the other good things I managed to catch. There was Whlcker’s fascinating account of life in Kuwait, Tony Hancock bringing a fresh, destructive quality to the role of a compere in such a commonplace programme as THE BLACKPOOL SHOW, and a first-class episode of SOFTLY, SOFTLY dealing with the possible bribery of a juryman.

If one adds to this list such regular stalwarts as TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, PANORAMA, THIS WEEK, LATE NIGHT LINE-UP and, of course, full coverage of Wimbledon and the Test match, can any intelligent viewer claim that he is being neglected by TV.

In his handling of the incomes policy, Vietnam and Rhodesia, Mr. Harold Wilson has recently shown that he has plenty of courage. Surely he can summon up the extra courage needed to increase the licence fee to £6 so that Britain can continue to lead the world in this one field of endeavour.

Will the new Postmaster-General, Edward Short, have the persuasive power that Mr. Benn so obviously lacked?

– Milton Shulman

The post This is television nowhere else in the world can match appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.