Sound test applied to Nana Mouskouri

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32659, 15 July 1971, Page 4

Sound test applied to Nana Mouskouri

Is the Nana Mouskouri show really good enough for half an hour of prime viewing time’ every week? This is television* remember-—and if yon took away that voice, what would be left?

There is an acid test which can fairly be applied to almost every screened show, be it home movie, wide-

screen three - dimensional film, or television. Turn off the sound, of put your hands over your ears, and see what sort of message or impression your eyes are being asked to transmit to your brain. Just as too many journalists see photographs only as illustrations to news stories, so do too many producers see the screen as little more than a stage setting for story or song. And there can be no excuse for this, when the old silent movies are still being resurrected every season, showing us how much art and human emotion can be conveyed without benefit of sound-tfack. Our Greek singer and her Athenian accompanists fare badly when put to this test. On a rating of A to D, D minus would be a generous mark. , . But let us assume that for half an hour we are back in that half-forgotten age of evening radio. We are listening to a distinctive and quite beautiful voice, backed by a sound that could only have come from the Aegeans. But are we spell-bound?

For « few minutes in every show: yes, we are. But the remainder of the time, most of us are waiting restively and in vain for an appealing melody to give warmth and meaning to the singer’s phrases. The Nang Mouskouri show is a classic example of the trap into which so many musicians fall. They cannot see the wood for the trees or, in their case, the melody for the notes and cadences. And while this is all very well for chamber music circles, it is not good enough for prime televisionOf course, and unfortunately, Miss Mouskouri is far from being the only offender, or the worst. Nothing in her show is actually painful to listen to, which is more than can be said for some of the alleged music perpetrated by the Partridge Family and in "Not Only But Also.” But even being boring is bad enough, ana so many things could have been done to avoid it. Much more use of the best pop songs, a strict limitation of one maudlin Greek love song to a show, and above all, a bit of get-up-and-go. Somebody should stick a pin in Miss Mouskouri; and put a firecracker under her Hellenic hep-cats. Till then, give me the MOnkees and Bob Monkhouse’s Mad Movies.

« • » "Doctor in the House” reminds this particular critic of a number of aphorisms and old saws. Such as the observation that one man’s meat is another man’s poison; and Dorothy Parker’s famous one-line review: "The House Beautiful is the play lousy.” However, the rest of my family find it hilarious. ♦ • • in recent weeks. Gallery has been scoring well below par, and It was a relief to see a return to form on Tuesday night The plight of the Child Welfare Service—and those it services—was presented in a rounded, balanced survey that left the ball in the viewers’ court. The conclusion was not stated, but implicit: if something is to be done about the situation, more money will have to be diverted from other Government expenditure, or from the taxpayer’s pocket It was also good to see a crusader in action. Whether one agrees with him or not, Bishop Crowther is no milk-and-water plaster saint He represents the Church Militant, and it requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture him on a white charger, swinging a mace round his head. He sees apartheid in the simplest black and white terms, and to him all sporting tours by white South Africans are extensions and acceptance of the apartheid principle. David Exel made a valiant attempt to constrain him within the strait-jacket Of a television interrogation, but this bishop is not so easily pinned.— PANDORA’S GUEST.