Page 3, 14th May 1954
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RADIO. The Petrov affair fresh in my thoughts, I listened with heightened interest to the play last week in the Home, "The Hungry God," by Joseph Pole. The advance notice said it was about the London ambassador of an unnamed totalitarian State and his personal conflict with the party over the desertion of one of his younger attaches. It seemed to promise excitement and drama of the heart-searching type.
I thought it fell very flat. The ambassador and his family never quite became real people, and I found a genuine interest in their fate impossible. The sinister plotting of "Them." back at Party H.Q., in an attempt to get the family home first, so as to be certain that the ambassador would follow, seemed merely an old tale that had been better told the first time. The real Petrov story was far more exciting and moving, I suppose the truth is that we know that this kind of thing is, sadly, a true part of the everyday world. It has to be handled very skilfully to succeed as fiction.
As Wallas Eaton's "Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells," would say, it's simply sickening of the B.B.C. to whisk off the air, all at the same time, "Take it from Here," "Life with the Lyons" (which has its funny moments), "Talk about Jones" (Peter Jones's witty programme of character sketches), and Wilfred Pickles's "Have a Go." For what have we instead'? At the moment there seem to be only the "Forces Show," which is dubious entertainment, and "Meet the Huggetts," which I have found to be uniformly dreary. This loss in a few days of almost all the family's chief stand-bys for lighter listening was made bearable only by the further repeat of the Third Programme's "A Very Great Man Indeed," written by Henry Reed and produced by Douglas Cleverdon. I had heard this twice before, but laughed as much as ever. The only jarring note for me was the Graham Greeneish episode about the worried priest at the end, which was an accurate parody in style only and not in content, and had too much the air of a mischievous afterthought to make an artistic conclusion. I wonder if the author and producer--and perhaps, more especially, the composer. Donald Swann-will be able to repeat their success in "The Private Life of Hilda Tablet." promised us for May 24 and 26. Those who did not hear "A Very Great Man" may like to know that Hilda is a modern composer. They ought to be warned, too. that the play is unlikely to be wholly suitable
for children. Joan Newton.
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