Strong and worthy ‘World at War’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 5

Strong and worthy ‘World at War’

No other episodes of “World at War” was stronger on the emotions than Thursday night’s coverage of the opening of the second front in Europe. The skill in building up the tension was worthy more of a drama than a documentary. For this stage of the war the available film footage 7.30: Melody Time. 8.0: Musical Miniatures. Noreen Welch (contralto); James Cahill (tenor); William T. Williams (bass baritone); The Aurelian Singers; The Laurie Searle Trio. 8.30: Weather and News. 8.40: Lobby Report. 9.0: Books of the Week. 9.30: Evening Encore. 10.0: All Gas and Gaiters. 10.30: N.Z.B.C. News, Weather. 10.49: The Epilogue — Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. 11.0: 8.8. C. News, Commentary. 11.15: Indoor Bowls: N.Z. Blind Championships. 11.18: Continuous. 3YC, CHRISTCHURCH 7 p.m.: Malcolm Arnold: Overture: Peterloo Op. 97 — City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Malcolm Arnold. 7.11: Stephen Roberts (baritone), Michael Lloyd (piano). Purcell: What is man? Nicola LeFanu: Paysage. Warlock: Fair and true; As ever I saw; The Fox; Jillian of Berry. 7.39: Bonporti: Violin Concerto No. 5 —Felix Ayo (violin), and I Musici. 7.52: Charles Ives: Symphony No. 1 in D minor —Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Morton Gould. 8.30: In the Studio: Patricia Lawrey (mezzo), Loretto Cunninghame (piano). Haydn: Cantata: Arianna on Naxos. 8.50: Brahms: Sonata for Two Pianos in F: Bracha Eden and Alexander Tamir (pianos). 9.30: “Praise the Lord, Wilson,” by Helen Shaw. 9.44: Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor—Andre Previn (piano), Yale String Quartet. 10.28: Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer —Hermann Prey (baritone), Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, under Bernard Haitink. 10.45: Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave, Op. 31—Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan. 3ZB, CHRISTCHURCH 7.2 p.m.: Sunday at Seven. 7.30: Men from the Ministry. 8.2: Pop Profile. 8.30: Brothers In Law. 9.5: Late Night Listening. 3ZM, CHRISTCHURCH 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. 3XA, RADIO AVON

News on the hour. 5.30: Paul Muggleston. 9.0: Dedications. 2 p.m.: Mike Richardson. 4.0: American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. 7.0: Paul Muggleston. 10.0: Talkback with the Rev. Peter Davis.

must have been enormous; the editors made brilliant use of it. Viewers were invited to realise the scale of the pre-' parations and the responsibility taken by those who made the decisions. And behind those decisions were the facts and opinions supplied by expert advisers. One of these advisers was the meteorologist, Dr Stagg, who estimated the weather conditions accurately for Eisenhower to launch the D-Day forces with reasonable chance of their success. This was television on a strongly personal note, for the D-Day generalship is still not forgotten and the men it affected could be imagined as the cousins of any New Zealander. The consequence of the failure of the landing cannot bear thinking about. Yet, when the men were ashore successfully the Allies were just starting their final task; if the war was virtually over, it was all over bar the fighting. i Many harsh battle i sequences made this one of the most harrowing episodes lof the series, but there seemed to be every justification for these scenes. It was a very honest episode. Allied soldiers were shown to have their sour moments when they were dealing with prisoners of the other side. ».• »4» “Special Branch” had a lively episode complete with a hostage, a temporarily mad scientist, and explosives — all very modern. In spite of the obvious scope for melodrama this programme did quite a lot to illustrate the dilemma of the police in a situation which has become too common round the world for comfort’s sake. There seemed no special reason, however, why the Special Branch, as such, should have been involved in this case. The uniformed police (in the programme) had the same idea, and one of the less attractive sequences was where the plain clothes side flared up at the uniformed side to establish precedent. Nevertheless, it was passable entertainment with, as noted some elements of value. Rodney Bryant, on “The South Tonight,” had Mr Reedy, the Chief Postmaster,

on screen to tackle him about the new postal clearance arrangements. Somewhere Mr Bryant lost his way so that Mr Reedy was able to emerge as the victor. The confrontation only seemed to prove that what 1 is meant by an improved postal service is one in which the frequency of street-box clearances is reduced from two a day to one. One of the justifications for i this was apparently that' some boxes had no letters to j clear at some times. Mr Bryant did not ask why i these boxes could be removed so as to leave the vast majority alone. * :’t « Advertising on television has, in general, become so poor that it must be only a matter of time before some of the products portrayed are actually harmed by the exposures. Because standards might then improve, this would be all to the good. ! One of the persistent: crimes is the repeating of advertisements on the same night even though this has I been officially declared as! contrary to policy. Judged as television — that is, whether they are worth seeing — some advertisements are good. Their quality, unfortunately, seems to vary in direct ratio to the distance from their place of origin — the smaller the distance the smaller the quality. Thus, the Christ-church-based advertisements are the most feeble or unw'atchable of the lot. On Thursday, locallysponsored stockings had a pretty but entirely wooden model say that these hose “know your legs better than you do” — a slogan the same, mutatis mutandis, as an American-based advertisement for a skin preparation. On the same night a bank which does business in Canterbury trotted out for the umpteenth time its fantastic notion that the true agony of bills is really nothing to do with money as such, but only to do with some sort of inconvenience in the writing of cheques. Since a belief of this kind could be held only by someone with a mental age of about six. and if this is the bank’s appraisal of prospective customers, it is impossible to perceive what benefit this presentation is expected to bring.—D.M.