What’s happened to the present?

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 16

What’s happened to the present?

F Review

John Collins

A letter has flooded in, capping a hectic week in which a telephone call jammed the switchboard.

The writer shares my irritation about watching interviews on topics resolved or forgotten long ago with people now many years older. This, she agrees, is particularly eerie when the subject of the interview has snuffed it in the period between the filming of the interview and its deterioration to such a state of frayed irrelevance that it is cheap enough for us to have a look at. The time warp caused by New Zealand Television Time may not seem important to some. Certainly, it could be argued that it doesn’t matter all that much if the Bruce Forsyth Christmas . Special we shall see this year was made in 1973 or 1980; the joker and songs will be basically the same as 1980, even if they grate a little now and again with their oddly outdated references to President Nixon or Mr Wilson. But, equally, it could be argued tliat N.Z.T.T. — particularly in news, current affairs. and i iterviews — is another important brick in the wall between ourselves and The World. News commonly uses the device of the Elastic Television News Day, a system whereby any overseas event that has ’ npened in the last three or four days is said to have happened “today.” Many a town that has returned to normal finds itself evacuated again when the film arrives in New Zealand; many a fire that has long since been doused, flares again, and people who have been buried leap to their deaths me more. It all happens “today.” In current affairs, we recently 1 ad a look at Rho-

sdesia in the run-up to the elections that led to the birth of Zimbabwe months ago. We worry about steel strikes that have long since * ended. We have background |ders on political scandals! that have faded from the! headlines. j Michael Parkinson’s guests! are more shadows from the past. Does it matter that the Roald Dahl and Jonathan Miller we saw on “Parkinson” (TVI) this week (N.Z.T.T.) are not the real, present Dahl and Miller, but merely electronic memories of what they were like and what they were thinking two or three years ago? I think so. From the medium • which of all media should serve up the present, •, e get history. Dahl said he had started a book that • light turn into a novel (“My Uncle Oswald,” which he has, of course, finished, and which has been well received), and Miller talked about putting the final touches of editing to a television series (“The Body in Question,” which was shown in Britain in 1978 and to which Richard Ingrams, television critic of the “Spectator,” long ago awarded First Prize for Most Boring Series). I Dahl was interesting; enough in a cadaverc s way, and his stories are such that any interview with him must have an added tension, the viewer perched on the edge of the seat waiting for the macabre twist. None came. And Miller, a sort of scruffy, intellectual rag doll, who himself had the habit of

teetering close to the point of falling off his chair, disappointing!'' f ’ d to tumble before the cameras. Shortchanged. Parkinson’s chummy interviewing style is remarkably effective with a wide range of . subjects, all of whom are suave, articulate, and at ease. Perhaps they are so confident and bursting with anecdotes that they would be entertaining if interviewed by a computer.

He does seem more at ease with the hearties, though, ogling his cricket heroes and swapping clubman anecdotes about Fred Truman and Clogger Normanton. With women he squirms and purves away, dropping heavy lounge-lizard hints, like a sales rep. with a good line in chat away from home. When the going gets sensitiv, he somehow sounds wrong. His questions to Dahl, about his son’s and wife’s illness, questions suited perhaps to a more intimate setting than a studio filled with an audience, guest guitarists, and a resident band, came out very oddly indeed.