Experiment For The TV drama

TV. I wrote last week of the film being successfully used as a substitute for live drama, imported lock, stock and barrel from the theatre. How interesting, therefore. was it when ITV presented J. B. Priestley's "Ever Since Paradise." in which the technique and resources of television were used to tell the story in a way that TV alone could—at least with live actors.
The play itself was a light affair, but the transpositions of time and place gave to the story of a typical marriage, love, quarrel, reconciliation, the vividness of a parable. I should have thought it would be well worth while commissioning Mr. Priestley to write a series of experimental TV plays. Such a series, I feel. could make a great deal of difference to the future of TV drama.
SEVEN o'clock on Sundays is an
early hour for viewing; but I try when I can to watch the religious programmes at that time. ITV, as I have said before, makes the more direct, the more actual, impact, perhaps because it is free from the pompousness which too
often spoils the B.B.C.'s religious programmes. Of course you have to pay for this, as with the incredible young man last Sunday (a successful playwrite, we were told) who managed to pack more nonsense into a few minutes than I have ever heard before. But how extremely ably the well-known clergyman, brought in to the rescue, dealt with him and extracted from him promises (1 hope not fictitious) of further private talks.
I CANNOT end without a further I tribute to Joyce Grenfell. But she ought to remember the intense irritation caused to one family at least when, in her half-hour programme, she gives us only about ten minutes of herself. The less we see of some stars the better, but not Miss Grenfell. M.B.
RADIO, This must be a tricky ' time for programme planners. A great many people are away on holiday or supposedly out of doors. Repeats of popular programmes seem to be the order of the day.
I have no quarrel with this idea. especially when it brings back to me such items as Joseph Cooper's delightful musical quiz programme "Call A Tune," about which I have already written. Last Friday, too, on the Third, I heard again the third of the wonderful trilogy about the works of the fabulous Richard Shewin and Hilda Tablet—this being "A Hedge Backwards." I hope these three plays will he offered to us again and again for many years to conic.
OOKING forward to future J-• listening, I would like to remind you that from September 3 onwards there are to be two extra news summaries in the Light Programme—one of them at 11 a.m., the other at 3 p.m. The B.B.C. are very careful to point out that the morning repeat of Mrs. Dale's Diary will be in no way affected. The usual morning story will be cut by two minutes instead Also in the afternoon, the music which follows on "Women's Hour" need be cut by only three minutes. There is some kind of moral here but I am not sure what
it is. Joan Newton.