TELEVISION AM) RADIO

by JAMES GRAHAM
T USED to think that the letters
in the TV Times and other programme papers were invented in their editorial offices. But after sonic examination I think they are too preposterous to be anything but genuine.
For example in the southern edition of the TV Times this week comes a quite unbelievable observation from a Hampshire reader that she wished she had seen "Emergency Ward 10" before she went into hospital because she would not then have made so many RIUX NS' and would have. known -not to speak to a houseman when the consultant is present and not to call the sister 'nurse' ".
I don't think any editorial writer, however sinister-minded, could have invented such Prussian obedience or desire for conformity. It's like Pavlov's dogs not only reacting predictably to a stimulus. but wanting to react to it, Although most of us would draw the line at this slavishness, we arc as television viewers, pathetic conformists. Conformity and habit are two chief guides to our channel switches.
Conformity is our resistance to new styles of entertainment. Habit in our endless addiction to old favourites long after the meat has been stripped from them.
Habit is, of course, by far the more important, but the way the programme bosses arc playing on it is becoming increasingly irritating.
Everything is being run in series. 1 he writers and directors are being pushed into the background and that mysterious figure the script .editor' is taking over. Even those peaks of television viewing— original drama by leading dramatists—are nosy lumped together under meaningless sub-titles like First Night, Drama 64, Festival and Studio 64.
The idea behind it is to attract a regular audience for the entire series. So that a habit for watching at a particular hour on a particular channel can be developed. Not "let's watch that new play by Harold Pinter" but "let's watch First Night". Thus one good play in a series can sell the next four or five weeks of old rubbish.
Unfortunately from the networking point of view the system works. We do watch from habit. Some quite execrable programmes are still grinding on because viewers cannot be bothered to break the habit of years and stop watching.
The current fad for Perry Mason is inexplicable to me.
The first five minutes is for guessing the victim. The second five minutes for guessing the timing of the murder. And the third five minutes for guessing the identity of the killer.
There are so few characters— economy in these matters is not confined to Britain it appears-that it would be difficult to guess wrongly.
This leaves 30 minutes for the actors to bumble *through their appointed gaffes of arresting the wrong man, prosecuting the wrong man, and—surprise, surprise—finding out that they arc wrong in the last few seconds.
It is not often that one feels sorry for an advertiser on television.
But I felt much sympathy for those advertisers who had to follow the This Week special programme on road accidents. The programme had been harrowing and frightening in the best sense. While the viewer was still pondering the message of this extraordinarily successful ten minutes of pure special pleading. up pops the commercials including. of all things, one for beer.
The effect by association, was surely to set up a revulsion to the product rather than a sympathy for it.
Saturday Night Theatre once commanded the heights of broadcasting. If last Saturday's offering Trial by Judge was typical, then it has fallen on very dull days indeed.
It was the story set before 1907 of an 80-year-old judge, widely respected as "the prisoner's friend" and now about to retire. On his last case, a murder trial, he deliberately misleads the jury. Not from malice. but in order to draw public attention to the injustice of having no court of appeal. Such a court was in fact set up later.
All the action of the play follows from our acceptance of this ludicrously improbable event. Ludicrous, because no judge, not even a semi-senile judge would need to do it. He could get ample publicity from his own bench. He could have refused to pass sentence. lie could have refused to accept the verdict.
Instead we were asked to believe that he condemned a man to days in the condemned cell for a reason no one explained.
Also it would be a change to hear some new voices on radio.
The same cocktail of actors has been shaken for years in sound plays under the umbrella of the BBC Rep. But there arc many other good actors, many of them unemployed due to harder times in the theatre and on television, who might bring a new style to radio acting. The style has after all been virtually unchanged for over 20 years.
Look and Listen
BBC Radio: Saturday (tomorrow): "Five To Ten", by Fr. George Songhurst. 9.55 a.m. Light. Sunday: Can We Believe In Life After Death?, discussion programme in which John Coulson lakes part. 7.45 p.m. Home. Monday: Enthronement of Archbishop Scanlan from St. Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow. 7 p.m. Scottish Home Service. Wednesday: "Assisi", by Neville Braybrooke. 9.5 am. Home. Wednesday: Christian Outlook includes news comment by Michael de la Bedoyere and a round-up of the religious periodicals by Neville Braybrooke. A new community paper Town rind Country produced by Abingdon and District Council of tihurches will he described by Philip Barron. 7.30 p.m. Third.
BBC-tv: Monday: The enthronement of Archbishop Scanlan from St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow. 10,45 a.m. with edited repeat at 10.40 p.m. Scottish TV.
: Sunday: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. a film made by OXFAM, About Religion. 7 p.m. ATV.