Tired Look About This Week’s TV

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32349, 15 July 1970, Page 3

Tired Look About This Week’s TV

It looks like being a i rather flat television week. < Monday night's programme i was certainly not an attrac- ! tive pace-setter and the im- < mediate outlook is none i too bright. There are few more charm- * ing screen personalities than . Elizabeth Montgomery, but there has to be a sameness I about her role as Samantha . in “Bewitched.” Dick York ! must by now be heartily ( tired of the whole arrange- . ment too.

Then there was another case for Sherlock Holmes, one which allowed him to be more over-bearing than ever with Dr Watson as dense and as wondering as before.. “The Boscombe Valley” story was unnecessarily gruesome in detail, and the melodrama .was played out in the fashion, of an early silent movie. “Grandstand” did not do much to improve matters. .The , sports team which runs it is probably doing the right thing in spreading its camera ' coverage as much as pos- ; sible, but the plain fact is l that the highlights from the i Rugby league test were ot 1 such modest quality that it i is doubtful if the television i audience was an appreciative one: and there is surely only ! limited support for go-kart; racing among viewers. The points of view on the use of mobile barriers for trotting races probably interested many people, however.

Memories are cruelly short, I and it is unlikely that Walter Kronkite’s interview with the former United States president, Mr Lyndon Johnson, the second in a series of three, warranted 59 minutes viewing, and its cost. The most interesting’ item was the final one, even if “A Memory Of October” turned out to be about Hungarians and the 1956 liprising, and not Russians and their revolution. Perhaps we were not by this time in a proper mood to appreciate its nuances, but it seemed at times that there was some

uncertainty whether this tale of a plot by . two expatriate Hungarians in London to assasinate. a traitor to their cause was leaning primarily on its comedy or its drama. 'For all that, this miscellany of morals, motives and emotions allowed Warren Mitchell jafi excellent chance. Alf Garnet’ would not have owned him: he had a gloriously patchy refined English accent, a firm dependence on the use of the term “old boy,” a great pride in his business success and in his member-

ship of an exclusive golf club. He was all confidence about the outcome of the plot he had hatched: his associate, played by Kenneth Griffin, was,not .. / 30-Minute . A variation on the familiar eternal triangle conversations at an airport among an advertising man, his wife, and a priest—forms the basis of “The Late Arrival of The Incoming Aircraft” one .of the Thirty-Minute Theatre series, to be screened frqm CHTV3 on July 27. The departure of the London plane is already . overdue when a further delay of 20 minutes is officially announced. Josie is desperate. Her husband Kieron will be home by now, find the note pinned to the bolster

land doubtless come rushing ■ after her to haul her back i home. Which he does. ; Kieron is in advertising. ■ He’s ■ successful, a pillar of : the community and not used ; to being thwarted.' The last thing he wants is to make a i public spectacle of his ' domestic affairs in the middle ’ of Dublin .airport Josie isn’t - so particular/ She needs all ■ her energies to resist the I onslaught of her husband’s : arguments, cajolings and i threats. She has never in her > life stepped out of line t before, let alone done any- ■ thing as drastic as running

Kenneth Griffin is a famii liar face on television screens, more familiar probably even 1 than that of Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett. His nervous ineptitude, and his more admirable principles, came out strongly. The hired assassin, played by Alfred Lynch, was rather like a Peter Sellers pop star in speech and demeanour. He must be the first screen prospective assassin ; to have had a lesson in Hungarian folk dancing immediately before setting off on his task of murder.

There was a twist at the end—the assassin died, not the planned victim: but “A Memory of October” did not take itself very seriously.— PANDORA.