COME OUT OF THE PARLOUR!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 8

COME OUT OF THE PARLOUR!

WK PROFESSOR IAN GORDON, who took a close look at American TY in "The Listener" recently, finds something radically wrong with television in Britain where, he says, the staple entertainment is the parlour game-four people (under a chairman) who guess and guess and guess . +

OME months ago I wrote for The Listener my impressions of television in America. After a couple of months of living and viewing on the other side of the Atlantic, I am still impressed by the differences rather than by the similarities between the use of the medium in the two countries. America has sponsored television. It is paid for by the advertiser, who sees to it that his product is visibly enjoyed on the little screen. Britain, so far, has preferred to rely on the BBC. But, in spite of stiff opposition in the House, Parliament has approved commercial television, and within a.few years England will have the kind of choice that in New Zealand is familiar-a YA and a ZB television competing and (one hopes) each improving the other. Meantime television aerials sprout from every chimney top. Even in what are still regarded as the poorer parts of London the forests of H’s and T’s reach up through the smoke like the wiresculptures in a modernist art-gallery. Television is now almost a yard-stick of the standard of living . . . need a man ask for more wages when he can manifestly afford to have television? We are even assured (by the police, too) that television has reduced the incidence. of crime. The burglar is entertained night by night with quizzes and games and plays and tap-dancers and pious epilogues nicely timed to send him to bed with his plans for the small hours forgotten. A million sets in England and Scotland and Wales keep the family at home, the allurements of the night blissfully ignored. It is a pretty picture; till one turns to, the daily papers. There the story is different. Television for some time now has been getting a bad press. Radio writers comment on its deficiencies as compared with what the television fans call "steam radio." The other evening

we were treated to a half-hour of American television, recorded on film. Ed Murrow, the well-known American news commentator sat in his study in New York, gazing out of his window. Through the window appeared the profile of the Queen Mary. urrow picked up his telephone and rang the Captain. The camera picked up the Captain in his cabin, surrounded by his family snapshots, his books and his mascot. We followed the Captain to the bridge and from the bridge to the deck (the evening skyline of Manhattan just over the Hudson River), and all the time Murrow and the Captain kept up a conversation. The scene went back to the New York studio. Through the window appeared the frontage of Eleanor Roosevelt's flat on East Side New York. Murrow picked up his telephone again. Mrs. Roosevelt’s voice replied, and there she was, in her study, surrounded by her family snapshots. And so the programme went on. The effect on the English press was considerable. Why, demanded writer after writer, cannot we have this kind of television? How much longer must we endure these third-rate plays, these second-rate documentaries, these fifthrate parlour-games , .. and so on for a third of a column. Although I am a confirmed admirer of the BBC; my sympathies are with the radio writers of the press. British television/is, compared with American, poor stuff. In the States, though one has to endure the inanities of the advertisers with their packets of crunchier cereals and better cigarettes, one can often strike a programme that persuades you to remain and look. In England, with very few exceptions, the programmes are of such a nature and quality that were you to have them presented to you at the local cinema you would feel a real sense of grievance against the management. Unless the critical standards of the burglar are pretty low, I suspect he’

will soon take to sneaking out again on his unlawful errands. The staple of British television is the parlour game. Most evenings it is the highlight of the programme. Four people sit in a row under the benevolent eye of a chairman and guess and guess and guess. One game is called Down You Go. The four experts are confronted with groups of blank spaces on a board. They have to fil) in the spaces with letters and so guess at the catch phrase which the words (were they there) represent. Another is called The Name’s The Same. The four experts are faced with some individual whose real name is William Shakespeare or A. Valentine or Topsy Turvey and once again they guess. At the moment the BBC is still recovering from a body blow it received when some of the neighbours of Oliver Cromwell rang up to say that they had recognised him and his name was only Smith. Next week the chairman of the panel spent a considerable time being frightfully. apologetic. Star show of the week is What's My "ine? The panel is faced with a man (or woman) who mimes a gesture representing his employment and the panel proceed furiously to guess his job, which is usually something like "pig-slapper" or’ "corset-lacer" or some such hilarious engagement. Part of the fascination of these shows, I suspéct, comes from the incongruity of panel and victim. At least two of the panelled ladies are titled. The spectacle of a real live Viscountess probing into the occupational background of a potato-peeler from an Edinburgh fish-and-chip shop-particularly when the Viscountess is addressed by her first

name and the fish-lady is_ carefully addressed as "Madam"-is no doubt very good for democracy. But done week after week, it grows tedious. Television (as American but not British politicians have discovered) brings wonderful publicity. "Reputations" are) made on the screen with the same kind of ease as a wife-beater makes the morning headlines. Some of the stars of the parlour games are well’on their way to being national figures. Lady Barnett’s views are always good copy, and Gilbert Harding who appears once a week in What's My Line is discussed in the Tube ("Did you hear Gilbert make that mistake last night?"), and has what I can assume is the satisfaction of having, like Royalty, had a daily bulletin issued when he recently took to hospital. Sound-radio programmes are divided into three channels, the Light, the Home and the Third. They grow progressively more highbrow in that order; but even the light programme is an affdir of quality. It is difficult to see what has happened to the high standards of the BBC when the Corporation approached the more difficult but potentially even more powerful medium of television. Sir John Reith was a grim man, with grim and elevated ideas, but he did put a stamp of quality on the early years of the BBC which has been its hallmark ‘ever since. Television seems to have been handed over to the lesser figures from the London entertainment world. One has only to compare week by week thesnames of the actors who still appear on sound radio with the minor stars of television drama to realise that there is (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) a feeling around that television is not a place where you can build up a serious reputation. This does not’ surprise me. Television presents a play each week. It is very seldom that its standard of either acting or production approaches that of a B-grade film. The Monday morning newspapers report another television flop with a regularity that cannot be entirely explained away by malice. Yet there is one aspect of television that would justify the cost of installation. You cannot beat the camera for actuality. Every time the television cameras move away from the producers and the cook-ers-up of novelty programmes and‘ the smarmy grins of the question-masters, and just look at things that really happen, the atmosphere of fake and contrivance drops, away. People in EngJand still say, "Ah, but you should have seen the Coronation programme." By great good fortune I did. It was repeated some. months ago in its entirety. Nothing could have been better, because nothing was contrived. It all happened, atid the cameras recorded faithfully, aided by the best men and women in

sound-radio as commentators. The same is true of sport. The cameras follow the

shuttlecock in badminton, or the swimmers at a gala, or the All Black games at Twickenham and at Murrayfield. And by some magic I cannot explain, all the dramatic intensity, that should be but is not in television drama, appears without benefit of producer or script. There is no need for the cheap jibe or the contrived and rehearsed jest of the parlour game. Even the commentator can allow the action to speak for itself. If it really happens then it is good television material. I believe this is the key to the difference between television in America and in England: American television’ comes down heavily on the'side of good report-ing-witness the Murrow programme | described earlier in this article, which is only one of many similar. English television, particularly in its evening performances, relies on fancy and imagination. Until England can work out a real art of television (where fancy and imagination may be allowed the fullest play), she would be better to stick to the camera eye that sees, That still leaves,plenty of scope for technical ‘and creative skill, The camera can only see what it looks at; and someone must tell it where to look,