Profusion Unlimited

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 396, 24 January 1947, Page 18

Profusion Unlimited

SOONER or later, in the heart of each one of us who is not as insensitive as ferro-concrete, there must'well up a great cry at the serials of to-day-this thought, couched in the language of strong emotion, struck me after listening to the two thousand and third episode (or near enough) of The Amazing Duchess (3YA, Tuesday and Thursday at 10,10 am.). Not that The Amazing Duchess is anywhere nearly so bad as many other soap-operas which charity and a slight knowledge of the law of libel compel me to leave unnamed. It isn't. There is an occasional flavour of gusto and reality about it; the characters have their troubles, but we are not harrowed by a constant suc-

eession of unhappy love affairs, motor accidents, desperate illnesses of only children, business failures, and the mental derangement of close relatives, nor at the end of each episode are we left with the heroine hanging over the crater of an active volcano while the villain jumps on her fingers and twists his black moustaches, Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, is very nearly human at timés, which is a considerable feat for a serial heroine, but surely she could have been brought to life in a quarter of the number of episodes. However, if we insist’ on having as many serials as we do have in each day’s programme, we cennot expect them to have artistic worth, because there are not enough good writers in the world to produce them. It is a matter of having either a few good’ serials, or thousands of inferior ones.