NOT MUCH OF NOTE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33422, 2 January 1974, Page 4

NOT MUCH OF NOTE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

Perhaps the N’.Z.B.C.’s research staff has discovered that nearly everyone is on the move on New Year’s Eve, that people will not bother with television, and that therefore there is no need to produce anything special for the occasion.

For those who were at home, and watching, it was an ordinary Monday night, save for the fill-in appearances of Dave Allen and, about midnight, a couple of starshells and words of greeting.

It somehow seemed rather off-hand when many viewers must have expected some programme of special significance at the new year. Perhaps the “Edinburgh Tattoo” was intended to meet this demand. Impressive it was, in colour. But few have colour sets yet, and not everyone is enchanted with the music of the pipes which dominated the show.

The British flair for pageantry was very evident, but it was an American unit, from a New Jersey university, which attracted particular attention. It showed extraordinary precision in its marching routines and its own form of mustketry drill. Love is said to make the world go round, and no-one can object to some expression of sentiment in television

programmes. But “The Waltons” on Monday night were a cloying lot, in a maudlin story about a dying racoon and a dead-end kid. There was a funeral service for the raccoon, in the rain, but it might have been better to have written the dead-end kid out of the story and have him buried instead of the raccoon. It was laid on with a trowel, as the Waltons exchanged

their dewy-eyed looks. The film of the evening was no great success either. “The Captain’s Table" had to work hard for its occasional laughs. But there could be no real objections to John Gregson’s shipboard adventures. British comedies of this vintage have a quite endearing simplicity about them. And they are free of smut R.T.B.