◆ SpookStack

rr “- v7 4 a wn as z - ae Ash happens (a potent phrase from* the TV critic’: article- shaping armoury, by the way) Mr Whitchouse’s counci] recenily placed Dixon of Dock Green among the choices for its yearly accolade. "It follows that of all ths TV police series this has the least to do ‘with reality and presents a rosy. paiernal authorntarian day- dream in which even the ‘ villains” tend tt shake the hand which acrests ihem, while the law is miraculously free of any. human failing Reassuring as this may be for those to whom " Jaw and order * are wordy to savour whatever the law ov ati whatever cost the order, 1 “should: ‘have thought that the rvimage presented by the donefmore to make ‘the police acceptable, if not exactly lovable, to the average viewer. Admiuedly the same can hardly be claimed for The Informer (Rediffusicn), " wherg everyone is equally corrupt, the most fascinating point—where Custer the soldier tangles with the Washington politicians. Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (Caclion—and heaven knows what the tithe means) is an extraordinarily ted thriller about a chanmitig con man (James Coburn) who cheats be way out of prison and into a bank robbery by seducing a succes- on of girls, one of whom (Camilla Spary) he marries. This is one of those pictures which are reasonably engrossing while one is watching them, but which immediately evapor- ate in one’s memory. There is a very nice performance by Severn Darden as a crocked electronics wizard, and Coburn fas seldom used hia natural attributes a0 effectively. But what it is all for, 1 have no idea. - Lenin in Poland is showing a: the Paris-Pullmad in a dowble-bill with Heifitz’s brillant Lady with the Little Dog. It is a salutary programme for those who are still amazed by the fact thai the Russians can be tender, sensitive and often deeply sentimental. yj Coming after a glut of Revolution reminiscences, Often drearily repeti- tive aad grandiloquent, ‘Lenin* did a ve thou for the. Tsar. with wee T yy Cars-(BBG-1) and. the. curregt Softly, Softly: series had. not sound promising. It is, however, jntimate litte film of Lenin's and memories while he was in jail, absurdly accused of spying We see bim at home *Nadia, his wife, and with the he tae, eented Like = but Barlow has become a sacred monster, and every policeman on the beat is now the object of not dislike of the entirely antagonistic speculation to down to motoring offences ;. one. us vicarious crime-fanciers. ‘audience talks “bac such statements a. You feel as if ~ the interlocking relationship you're somebady ‘ of ‘ You really 4 the hierarchy, Were at comyit feel important.’ The tendency to OVER es isolation from the public was made 2 Cars has’ gone soft, painfully clear and the slow eroding **PUS = Oravura performa: of pity brought home. ‘I used to Rachel ‘Thomas at a fiercely : . __o: . Welsh playground-minder, cry in the pictures,’ said one young’ two-part episode did liltle m policewoman who recognised, Te- hint at the series’ former uctantly, that she was becoming: Difficult to say what exactly harder, ‘ but that doesn’t happen at' wrong, but I suspect it has tc all now.’ , ree eee ‘an increasing ‘bias towards | While all regretted the growing | built, and thag this has destr police, most put it Moments of unexplained : motivation which suggested characters had lives of tk which were interrupted, rat! man, with a sense of regional It was fascinating, therefore, to memory, to the 1926 strike, when | brought into being, by the ¢ have the opportunity of measuring these fictional coppers against the people had io be handled rather roughly’; no one tried to impose | of the story-lines, Of the two Russian docur real thing, and Don Haworth’s the *’Evening all’ myth. _|n par-- | personally found that th: licular, the CID man explained that’ The World Turned Upside D documentary, Police (BBC-1), played comparatively fair in what it showed us, Possibly by taking one force, that of the West Riding, ‘a very narrow line divides a detec- the edge aon Granada’s Te tive from a thief’ and owned up That Shook the World. 5: to disappointment on a job ‘ where it concealed the fact that ethics and ‘there's nothing been pinched,’ The standards may vary a great deal general impression was then that throughout the country but, within the Jaw and their quarry have a” its imitations, and while naturally *P¢cial relationship which excludes gver-dramatising. There wa. friendly rather than hostile, it didn't the publ try to hide the less sympathetic aspects of what makes a man or woman decide to become a police- Tagan. 1 - You know Fred Wilson? Well, if he’s smoking pull him in. He always on smokes like a chimney when he's done the apocalyptic Welles's commentary added t ajob.’ Factor fiction ? Actually fact: "| True, an older officer explained. tary. But it's a proof of the apparent - an ana the effect of diminishing bot grammes used many of 1] newsrecl clips and, while 1 covered a little more ground, subject matter was tdetilicai. that where Granada fell dow fusion between documentary weer cteiieted reafien a. t d reconstructed Teauty wi boom of wm it, Was a quote. fromthe documen- _ pression of romanticised bo The BEC played it cool. W that he had signed on in 1937 when uthenticity of Softly, Softly that it did reconstruct it was don: there were ‘nine jobs to 10 men’ and the salary-~‘not the wage, mind you," he explained, ironically —seemed ‘a fortune.” But his younger colleagues fell back on seemed unl in * Heartbreak House. between Peggy Ashcroft and Dorothy Rather, the doubt has been about some of the directions her talent’s taken. When all that larger- nclife. cower and intelligence go Tutin. Treve Worth as Mrs Hushabye might easily have been said by Watt or Barlow. As it happens, last week's episode was not one of the better ones; the central theme, Watt's kid- open, and where they fell Eisenstein's that this was myth-making factual truth. Not that Gran: film it was u: napping by a paranoiac Hungarian, was bad—it was just that t ikely. But the tide issues, was better. she twines, she insinuates in innocent | clerks and = officials, ren ears, smiling with a fatalistic, pitying tenderness which is never far from twisting into a jcer. Amusement flickers into pain, pain into amuse- ment, until all sport seems cruelty and cruelty a sport That's the keynote of the play, and she sustains it for the rest of the cast all evening, weaving around the action in which she's not herself involved, a gleaming net of watchful mirth and despair. It could be excessive. In fact, it's as perfectly calculated as the light, teasing stress with which she calls her philandering husband “Dear child.” = She has not: taken over the play: she knows her place iioits structure exactly. At the close, with the zeppelins thundering overhead, John Clements's Shotover stands dominating the ship- Shaped stage ike a pilot at the wheel. She advances on to the stage’s apron, jutting into the orchestra, eyes up ward, breast forward, a living com- pose of all the mermaids, witches ang noble dames the clipper-builders chose for figureheads. No one has expressed Shaw’s image of -the Eternal Feminine ‘wore exactly The latest product of Caryl Jenner's tenancy of the Arts is a slay called The Laundry. This ponderous adaptation from the French is a translalion of the minotaur myth to Anouilh territory, with a number of deprived Frenoh ladies in musty black what it was like in Petrogra: are a novelty and perhaps - more. It's tangible history. even when they are talkin, aod have to be translated, fact the producer, Robert was able to record a surpri ber of people who spok: sometimes in splendidly u accents. But instead of pursui: man im the flesh, John script consistently — releg recordings to secand place, of slabs of text-book nari always seemed ta be at o from the society that Fri Cradock had been looking third and last programine today, * Fathers and Sonx,' More voices and everydas But so far there has bec: poke of a flash of colo: journalism has been a favour of history in sma’ It's all the more a pity | Programme budects in Ra Sirctch to many trips lo Ru where else. Radio is ch apologists are always sayii be saying louder than ev. Next two years, while the experiment (which began Leicester four days ago} gc A local station is supr able to manage on £50,0 the ‘trouble is. that 2 sui sounds a cmere, nothing i