Viewers’ views

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 4

Viewers’ views

Letters on television topics ere subject to .the rules applying to general correspondence. MARCUS WELBY I heartily agree with “Welby Admirer.” My friends and I have eagerly looked forward to this programme each week. It is a good, clean programme, appealing to those who have a humane outlook on life and to those who have something of a soul, m this hectic day and age. Of course no doctor would have the time to spend so long with each patient, we all realise this. Nevertheless, this all goes to make up?a fine TV series. The kindly Dr Welby reminds me of another doctor who tended my family and me for many years and who has now passed on but who we shall remember with affection always. May Marcus Welby soon return to our screens, as a relief from some of the bawling, screaming TV programmes that one has to endure, before reaching the set to turn them off. ANOTHER WELBY ADMIRER. Of all the sententious twaddle churned out by TV production companies, “Marcus Welby” ranks high. In serials of this sort, some suggestion of reality is required. Here there is none. How the Americans love to splash sentiment over things. J.K.R.

How anyone can defend “Marcus Welby . M.D.” is beyond by comprehension, even after making due allowance for varying tastes, the accessibility of the ‘off’ switch, etc. It is maudlin muck, and its inclusion on our TV programmes for so long is an insult to the New Zealander’s intelligence—and the same goes for “Bracken’s WorId.”—NAUSEATED.

Perhaps we would all be better off for a reduction in viewing hours. Then the programme quality could be improved, and such trash as “Dr Welby,” “Peyton Place” and “Bracken’s World” could be left out—BE SELECTIVE. I (and, I am sure, many other viewers) heaved a sign of relief at the disappearance of "Bracken’s World” and “Marcus Welby”—not because these two muchmaligned programmes were any worse than some of the

junk which clutters up our screens, but because I was fed to the back teeth with your interminable harping on the shortcomings of these two productions while totally ignoring the many stupid, tasteless and inane features which the N.Z.B.C. sees fit to inflict on viewers. Here are a few which make “8.W.” and “M.W.” seem like Shakespeare—“ Nearest and Dearest,” which a prominent English reviewer described as “abominable verbal squalor” —the moronic “On The Buses”—and the puerile "Not In Front Of The Children,” in which the leading lady cackles her way through the script like a hen advertising the arrival of an oversize egg. But, of course, these are British, and therefore, presumably, sacrosanct as far as our local TV intellectuals are concerned. Oh, well, they still have "Peyton Place” to fall back on. Yours, etc., GIVE IT A REST. (Perhaps “Give It a Rest” has been confused by the regularity with which viewers discuss “Bracken’s World” and "Marcus Welby.” In the last 11 weeks there have been six comments on “Bracken’s World,” one of them commending a particular episode; and there have been three comments on “Dr Welby” in /that period.— PANDORA!