TV1’s ‘planning’ a calculated affront

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34037, 29 December 1975, Page 4

TV1’s ‘planning’ a calculated affront

(By

A. K. GRANT)

In a recent “Listener,” television One claimed to jhave a programme planning department, and i further claimed that its Christmas programmes were “carefully planned.”

If TVl’s programmes on Friday and Saturday evening were the result of careful planning, then we can only suggest to the new Minister of Broadcasting that he rationalise the TVI Programme Planning Department by transferring its members (without loss of salary) out of television altogether and into planning the programme of the Manawhenua Scout Association’s Gang Show. They would still be costing the country money, but they would be doing no harm, except to audiences in Manawhenua.

Friday night’s carefully planned programme consisted basically of two Bszrade films (“Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” immediately followed by "Paradise Hawaiian Style”!, and having conceived this brilliant formula, TVI followed it up on Saturday night with two more B-grade films, “Brigadoon” (all right, “Brigadoon” may be B-plus. but. it is certainly not A-grade), followed immediately by “The 39 Steps.” That is not programme planning. That is a calculated insult to the tolerance of viewers. We are only sorry that Bert Walker was not given the chance to feed the TVI Programming Planning Department in strips to his dog, Butch. ❖ ❖ ❖ There was one decent programme on TVI on Friday, but even that was produced by Pentacle Films. “Curved Air” a beautiful short film about hang-gliding, fully conveyed the sense of peace and freedom which the hangglider experiences. We thought, as we watched the clean, simple craft floating slowly through the air, that they had turned up at the wrong stage of Man’s aerial evolution. They should have preceded the Wright brothers, the Lancaster bomber, and Concorde, rather than come after them. It is rather as though Man, having built the U.S.S. “Forresta!” and the liner I “Queen Elizabeth II,” had (then invented the coracle. ® «

The Barbra Streisand programme “Funny Girl to Funny Lady” was disappointing. Dick Cavett got off one or two good cracks and B. Streisand sang a song or two, but most of the programme

consisted of shots of a posh audience frenziedly applauding Barbra-babes, and Bar-bra-babes revelling in their doing so.

To us there is something both indecent and embarrassing about watching a performer who needs applause as much as Miss Streisand actually getting it, as though one had caught her on the 100 or was listening to her make love in an adjoining motel. The embarrassment is caused by witnessing the rapturous public satisfaction of a private and powerful need. All performers regard applause as their principal reward, but to performers like Miss Streisand it is more than a reward, it is protein, oxygen and sunlight. We would not wish to deny it to her, and she must inevitably receive it in public. We just don’t think it is a very pretty sight.

The programme about the Maori Land March, “Te Matakite O Aotearoa,” put us in mind of a book we read long ago at school, called “Myths and Legends of Maoriland.” The programme might have been subtitled “Myths and Legends of Maori Land.”

As an attempt to convey the flavour of the march; to show us the exhilaration, determination and sense of being caught up in a Purpose experienced by the marchers, it succeeded. But it failed utterly to explain to those not part of the movement what the march was about and whether it was justified. We heard a few grizzles from marchers about compulsory Crown purchase of Maori land and about the restrictions 'on its use imposed by the Town and Country Planning Act. But these measures bite equally harshly and unpopularly on pakeha landowners. We still don’t know whether the marchers want to prevent Maori landowners Voluntarily selling their land to non-Maoris. and if they do, how they iustify such a restriction. All these and many other questions would have to be answered before one could form a view about the Maori Land March which would enable one to place Friday’s programme in perspective. The Maori Land March was not like the Jarrow Hunder March of the early thirties, justified by the brute fact of starvation. * * :i< Television Two claimed our almost undivided attention on Saturday, as a result of the

carefully planned programmes on TVI referred to earlier. We nearly always watch “Mod Squad” in preference to “The Waltons,” but began to regret this choice on Saturday, when the programme degenerated into mawkish sentimentality over a baby which Julie wanted to adopt. It pulled itself together and ended quite movingly, but there were times when we found ourselves yearning for the gritty, uncompromising realism of “The Waltons.” TV2 followed “Mod Squad” with “The Questor Tapes,” an engaging science fiction film about a rather endearing robot, or android, as they now prefer to be called. It seems that humanity is watched over by these androids, of whom there is only ever one at a time, and who recreate themselves only once every 200 years, which seems to be carrying zero population growth about as far as it can be carried. Finally we watched “Barnaby Jones,” a perfectly unexceptional American detective programme involving a villainous lawyer who murdered three people. It was comforting to think that any lawyer in New Zealand who got up to such tricks would almost certainly be struck off.