Run of good TV1 plays broken

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 19

Run of good TV1 plays broken

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

There is no better conclusion to a week-end’s viewing than a good play and TVI has consistently met this request of late. However, the “Armchair Theatre’’ offering on Sunday night, “Still Life,” was far from being a good play.

For a start it was hardly a television play at all, but one which seemed more attuned to the stage. A live audience by necessity will accept a singleroom setting with a door for the actors’ scurrying backwards and forwards: on television the practice is irritating. These exits and entrances on cue undermine a play’s credibility. The stage effect was noticeable in other respects. too. The cast spoke as though they were reaching out to an audience — not being spied on by cameras — as they enacted a supposed sampling of country mansion domestic drama.

To match the acting excesses was a plot which was so unreal that its only chance of success lay in Peter Sellers filling all the roles. It bore a faint resemblance to the film, “The Graduate.” but had neither the finesse, nor

the Mrs Robinson, to invite comparisons. The characters were just as flimsy. The mother (Margaret Rawlings) might have got away with her conceit and her reluctance to grow old gracefully if she had played the part more evenly. The father (Michael Goodliffe) was even harder to fathom. His reactions to the odd events under his roof were strange even for a nonfisherman whose hobby was making fishing flies. The daughter (Rachael Herbert) and her ill-man-nered boyfriend (Michael Beint) were equally improbable, although they were perhaps the innocent victims of a play which was intended to say something about lost youth. If so then the theme was lampooned to death. The final insult was when for the sake of expediency the play ended with both couples abruptly falling into each other’s arms; the younger pair on camera and the elder, if the mother’s forecast proved correct, off camera. After all they had endured a more meaningful conclusion would have been the four heading in separate directions. “Seven Davs” looks to

be suffering from end-of-year fatigue. The subject on Sunday night, heroin trafficking in New Zealand, was not without interest, but at the same time it was hardly a revealing or penetrative inquiry. The topic is one that could bear closer scrutiny than just police statistics and the detection problems of customs officers.

Still, to be completely honest we must admit to missing parts of “Seven Days.” At the same time on TV2, “Oil Strike North” was ending its run with some high-seas action and we succumbed to the temptation of trying to keep tabs on two programmes at the same time.

“Oil Strike North” has been a difficult programme to judge. Some episodes were very appealing, but others were dull to the point of being dreary. And the characters were just as mixed. Perhaps when the oil starts flowing in the next series the potential of the programme might be better realised. A dominating character would not go amiss, either.