In View - The Month in Television

IN VIEW - The Month in Television
September 1996

by Simon Coward

Roll-up! Roll-up! See the exciting new September 1995 programme schedule for the BBC and Independent Television. This is your chance to see Casualty, Heartbeat, London's Burning, Soldier Soldier, Dangerfield, Crimewatch. Oh, and Dyke TV. Um no, that wasn't a mistype - I said '1995' and I meant '1995'. There won't be many of you out there, in Britain at least, who won't know that I could have just as easily said '1996' and meant it too - such is the rich tempting tapestry of modern British television.

The autumn/winter schedule began in earnest in September, and it readily became apparent that the only area where any of the programme schedulers had been using their thinking caps was in deciding whether this year Seinfeld (or The X Files or Cutting Edge) should be shown on the same day and at the same time as last year or whether perhaps, just perhaps, the viewers could stand the shock and excitement of finding their favourites re-routed to different page in the Radio Times. The longevity of these programmes is a situation which I am sure delights a large proportion of the viewing populace. But not just them - continued success of an existing programme means less need to gamble with an untried and untrusted product. With the possible exceptions of Beeb 2's Seinfeld and C4's Dyke TV, all these programmes are big audience grabbers and no-one likes to drop a winner, do they?

It is undeniably impressive how many - or few, depending on your point of view - of these programmes have needed to retain their regular cast over the years to remain popular. Sure, in most cases, some familiar faces remain, but in the main, where the regular cast numbers more than just a couple, it has undergone major surgery over the years - and this doesn't seem to have dented the series' popularity one little bit. Where the problem begins to show itself is that most of these series, particularly those mentioned in the first paragraph (and I say this to avoid offending the X Files fans), tend towards the "chewing gum for the eyes" category. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they all pull in the audiences now, but how many people talk about them animatedly the day after; how many people sitting at home are not only watching these programmes but taping them to watch again (or even just for the sake of taping them)? Will people, in ten years time, ever want to watch 'vintage' episodes of Nigel le Vaillant in Dangerfield or whoever's left in Soldier Soldier? Is there actually anyone out there who really cares a toss about any of these series?

Anyone who wants something new, that's the least bit challenging, thought-provoking or just different will have to look somewhere else. If you exclude one-off plays and occasional two- or three-episode mini-series, in peak time the only brand spanking new drama or comedy programme I could find this month was The Hello Girls. Well thanks a bundle - the cutting edge of new comedy on the BBC is a vehicle for a ex-EastEnders actress. Laugh, I nearly did. Honestly. Sadly, when you've already given most of last year's hits a fair few chances already - probably sometime back in 1993 - it doesn't leave you with a great deal to watch when they show their faces again this year.

Fortunately, even on the returns front, one or two items do, thank goodness, still cut the mustard. Just as I'd given it up as being another one-series wonder, Game On returned and was, for a series with such a small regular cast curiously unhampered by the departure of Ben Chaplin to the Hollywood hills. The series will not need describing if you've seen any episodes before, but the second outing was as challenging to the sitcom norm as the first series was. The first half of the run even worked in a great about-face by switching the success or otherwise of the personal and sexual lives of the participants. Top notch stuff, anyway (easy this informed critical comment, eh?) but, as I am given to believe that a number of Hat Trick's productions will be scrutinised in a forthcoming review, I won't go on at length here about this one. Suffice to say that Game On still appears to have legs and Neil Stuke makes an admirable Matthew Malone. Well, not admirable actually, in fact the character is a 95% complete arsehole, but I'm sure you get my drift.

Another rave quite literally from the grave was The Legacy of Reginald Perrin. The same character's Fall and Rise... was a series which people either loved or hated and I was one of the former. The first series was based on a book - "The Death Of Reginald Perrin" - and benefited greatly from having the usual surfeit of material that a book provides in allowing the author to pick and choose the best bits for the series. The second series, although pre-dating its book, worked just as well with little change in the milieu in which Reggie found himself - namely battling against the inhumanity of the large corporation. Where the series began to lose their way was in David Nobbs' determination to broaden Reggie's window of attack from the company to the country as a whole. This started in the third series which although concerning itself mainly with saving the sanity of the middle-aged, middle-class, middle-management - it was obviously the way he saw the series going - widening its outlook onto the world. Leonard Rossiter's untimely death meant the end of the Perrin series - fortunately, perhaps, as the programme seemed to have reached the end of its natural life and without Rossiter's inspired tragi-comedic performance, the only glue that really held the final series together, it was laid to rest. That is, as they allegedly used to say on Tomorrow's World, until now.

The Legacy... continued the trend started by the original programme's series three. Reggie has just passed away and the reading of his will revealed his considerable fortune, amassed from his series two "Grot" chain. With the exception of Trevor Adams, who eluded the pre-production search for previous series cast members, all the old faces were there, and in some cases I do mean old. John Barron in particular looked cadaverous enough to have passed on several years earlier, but his voice at least was as full and resonant as ever. While the plot of Legacy... was preposterous, revolving, initially at least, around the bizarre terms and conditions of Reggie's will, it was no more ridiculous that any of those in the earlier series, but like season three its broadsides were directed at a wider foe and it was again this plus the dialogue which all too often revolved around the clichéd sayings of the various cast members which meant that The Legacy... was a poor testament to the Perrin canon.

Early in the month we were treated, if that is the right word, to Harpur & Iles - a two-part crime thriller shown on consecutive nights. Although a new production, the only new ground it trod was that of the valleys, for this was not any old two-part crime thriller, this one was set in Wales. To be fair, there was nothing really wrong with the programme, it just didn't do anything a dozen other one-off police thrillers haven't previously done before. In truth, if it had been an episode or two of a longer series it would have been reasonably impressive but standing alone it needed to say more than it did and have some facet or other - apart from the Welsh factor - that to make it stand out from the crowd. It did have its moments though, and parts of it - especially towards the end of the second instalment - were genuinely gripping despite the difficulty in finding any character amongst the motley assortment that might be worth caring about. Humour, where it existed, was black and didn't extend to the idea of giving some of the characters 'amusing' names: 'Ancient Dave', 'Rick The Intelligent' and the main villain of the piece, 'Tenderness Mellick' played with a curious lack of dimension by the usually excellent Jim Carter. Perhaps it just needed more warmth, but none of the characters were loveable enough, horrid enough or wacky enough - they were merely just about enough and there are plenty more where they come from.

When the pen of Andrew Davies and Bernadette Davis wasn't occupying Monday nights with Game On, it took residence in a three part gothic fantasy (it says here) about a young librarian, Alice White, who once a month has the misfortune to turn into a wolf. Wilderness certainly seems to have divided both the critics and the audience of telefantasy fans, but I shall try not to sit on the fence here. Part one set the situation up well and would have left the audience wondering whether the wolf was merely a fantasy in her own mind. The misconceived pre-publicity for the series blew the gaff on this one, so unlike the main supporting characters, we knew all along that she wasn't out of her mind, just out of her body. Actually, part one was very good indeed, with Amanda Ooms making Alice kookie enough for an uninformed audience to struggle to make up their mind and giving poor prospective boyfriend Dan (Owen Teale) no chance at all. The only fly in the ointment was Michael Kitchen as Alice's psychiatrist Luther, and while suitably dislikeable and oily, this really was Kitchen on autopilot playing a character he's played far too often before.

Part two was as many part twos are, very much a bridge between the beginning and the end and in truth this could easily have been half the length it was and no one would really have minded. What this second segment did have, though, was Gemma Jones. Now I've never had much of an opinion either way about her acting skills, but here she was absolutely first class and gave far and away the best performance in the entire serial. She played Jane Garth, an expert on wolves and one of the custodians of the only protected area for wolves in the UK. Alice meets her during a lecture and it is to Jane that she later turns in desperation as the final episode attempts to tie most of the threads together.

Luther is still convinced that Alice's wolf is imaginary and believes, as TV psychiatrists often tend to, that having sexual intercourse with her will help him "get inside her ... mind". Sadly for him his advances are firstly rebuffed by Alice and, when unsuccessful, by the wolf. This doesn't do Luther any favours and in time-honoured tradition he goes yampy and ends up in a mental institution (somewhere in Cliché City, no doubt). Alice meanwhile has given up on her human persona altogether and heads for Garth's protected wolf pack. Garth is the only character able to treat Alice's predicament in a very matter-of-fact way and is pleased to be able to assist her in her desire to become the wolf permanently.

So, what of Amanda Ooms? Alice was Swedish by birth and I presume this was the reason for casting the Norwegian (I think I read that somewhere) Ooms in the part. Despite being brought over to Devon by her English father when aged ten, she hadn't lost her Scandinavian accent. The accent did waver somewhat and at times the British part was undefinable, at others it could certainly have been Scottish. When on form, Ooms played Alice with an animal-like intensity, hard to describe but interesting to watch. What would she be like playing someone normal?

I case you were wondering, yes, the series did fall foul of the usual problem with characters metamorphosing all over the place - what happens to their clothes? Well for much of the time, Ms Ooms did the decent thing and took all her clothes off but every once in a while she had the misfortune to change unexpectedly and then, I'm afraid, we just had to leave the resolution to our imagination. Have I sat on the fence too much? OK, I thought Wilderness was, in the main, a fine serial - not a great one - but enjoyable and good enough to keep on tape and watch again. So there.

One final note; September 1996 saw the passing of Nicholas Brett as editor of the Radio Times. During his tenure, Mr Brett has seen many changes in the world of television and overseen many in the Radio Times. The biggest of these, as far as the magazine was concerned was the government's decision to terminate the exclusive cartel which the Radio Times and TVTimes (Magazine!) had sole rights to list their own companies' programmes. Interestingly, in his final editorial, rather than talk of the opportunities afforded by the new-found ability of the Radio Times to include listings for other channels, he negatively refers to the need to "weather the competition ... when the government removed our exclusive right to publish the BBC's schedule of programmes." Curious too, that he mentions the publication of the schedule of programmes as important as during his time as editor of this once-great publication the schedule pages have become less and less important and take up an ever-decreasing part of the magazine. This is despite the fact that not only has the number of channels listed increased, not just from two to four terrestrial channels, but also to include a multitude of satellite and cable stations. At the same time, the number of viewing hours the publication has to cover has also increased - there are now as many as 84 hours of broadcasting per day on the four terrestrial channels alone, compared with between 30 and 35 ten years ago for just BBC1 and BBC2.

The Radio Times may well be a better all-round magazine than it was ten years ago, but if I wanted to read a good all-round magazine, then the shelves of WHSmith's are full of them. If I want to find out details about some programmes I might be thinking of watching then I now get 35 pages of listing information in the Radio Times, 14 of which cover some satellite and cable stations. That leaves just 21 for four terrestrials which doesn't compare particularly well with the 18 or so for two that you'd find in the magazine of ten years ago. I know it isn't designed as such, but will what success will any researchers in twenty or thirty years time have in trying to find out who-was-who and what-was-what from the Radio Times? Ironic isn't it, that at a time when more programmes are being properly saved and archived that so little information about them is given in a magazine such as RT? It may still be the best of the listings magazines, but when you look at the competition, it really isn't that much of an achievement and I wonder if anyone out there apart from Nicholas Brett thinks the RT has improved over recent years.

Copyright © Simon Coward 1996. All Rights Reserved.

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