RADIO & TV

By James Graham
THAT resounding flop Not so much a Programme made its unpredictable reaction to falling public interest last Sunday with an attack on religion.
Programmes like these rely heavily on their ability to provoke publicity. The one sure way in the past to attract newspaper publicity has been to attack religion, religious leaders or religious behaviour.
The hope was—and only too often it was realised—that some church dignitary, stung to protest, would speak publicly about it, enabling the producers to announce that "time for the other point of view will be allowed next week". At the same time they would be revelling in columns of free publicity.
The newspaper correspondents —like the mythical "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells"—were their best friends. The more controversy the programme could inspire, the more important it would appear.
This cheap method of success is, of course, no fault of the speakers who appear in such programmes. A producer who wishes to provoke controversy about, say, religion, chooses those speakers with the sort of reactionary views likely to offend ordinary people.
These speakers, like Pavlov's dogs, react to the stimulus of the mention of religion by yapping their prejudices in the way the producer predicted.
No blame should be attached to them. No one expects them to say anything they don't believe. And they are as much entitled to scepticism as others are to Faith. But it just seems rather extraordinary, that in Not so much is Programme the only speakers in a discussion on Christianity were non-Christians.
The programme was unscripted. But this applies only to what was said. It does not apply to the choice of subject matter for these particulars speakers. That was made in advance.
This is not to say the Christians should remain uncriticised. But it would help to have constructive criticism rather than a few sneers, and something of a rather higher standard than the gentleman who announced last week that "Christianity was vitiated by the fact of the Inquisition." He might as well say that all poetry is vitiated by one poor poet.
But one formidable talent that has emerged from the programme is that of Miss Eleanor Bron. If she can survive this disastrous series and the somewhat extravagent praise heaped upon her by another member of the cast last week, Not so much a Programme will have had at least one triumph before it closes—a closure which 1 hope will be not long delayed.
Comedy of another kind, however, reached a peak that even the formidable talent of Mr. Michael Bentine will find it hard to top. Square World was so hilarious that I was still laughing through Kipling, which takes some doing.
The episode of the train robbery was the funniest film sequence 1 have seen since Jacques. Tati played Monsieur Hulot. It is greatly to the credit of the BBC that they allow such a high budget to a comedy programme.
At least I presume that the elaborate and usually wholly successful visual jokes require a high budget. certainly very much more than the old formula of a comic standing in front of the camera telling stories.
What is perhaps rather surprising is that the more traditional comedy programmes like those of Arthur Haynes can survive in the teeth of this sort of competition. Presumably the answer is that there is room for both—Michael Bentine's visual humour at one end of the scale and the purely verbal but still successful comedy of Morecambe and Wise at the other.
Television's supply of old films seems to be limitless. And there are still scores of old movies awaiting their hour in the TV vaults. From the programme planners' point of viw, they are excellent stand-bys.
The quality of entertainment is often as high and higher than most television programmes. And it saves the effort of creative thought for a peak-hour programme.
But the television producers are understandably concerned at the amount of time given over to old movies and the BBC and the 1TA are right to impose a limit.
The first full-length television programme on the new rite Mass will be on ABC television next Sunday at 11 a.m. The Morning Service comes from Christ the King, Cockfosters, N.14, it will be a dialogue Mass celebrated by Fr. Edmund Jones, 0.S.B., the parish priest.