Daze of our lives

Press, 25 September 1980, Page 15

Daze of our lives

[AFTERNOON' TV .

Liz Harvey

You have to admire the soap-operas for the ingenious way in which they spin out the plot. It involves a masterly use of. the — uh — pause — uh — if you see what I mean — uh — right? During the pauses (and you can almost hear the actors counting out the requisite number of seconds) it seems that its obligatory to assume an expression designed to be MEANINGFUL and DEEP, but which usually succeeds in merely looking glazed. Not (hat one shouldn’t have some sympathy with them as they struggle to make something meaningful out of such meaningless scripts. “The Young and the Restless” (One) on Monday and “Days of Our Lives” (One) on Tuesday (two in one day would be altogether too confusing for the inexperienced) provided a positive cornucopia (or should it be comea-copia?) of Intensely Felt Emotions. “The Young and the Restless,” which I’d never seen before, was impressive in much the same way as a slow bicycle race .

would they all grind to a halt through lack of action? Mind you, there were some wonderful lines: “Every fibre' of my being tells me I should say no — I’ll meet you in the lounge in five minutes, doctor.” Every fibre of my being • tells me once was enough. An intermittent relationship with. “Days of our

Lives” produces the same effect as time-lapse photography »■. ; one actually sees something happening, e.g. a couple of years ago Bob was married to Phyllis, now Neil’s wife. Then he was married to Julie, now Doug’s wife. Now he’s married to the poisonous Linda, - who wants only power and money. As for the script, it has much in common with “The Young and the Restless” and Dr Marlene diagnosed it correctly when she said: ‘This conversation is rather hard to believe.”

In contrast, Granada TV’s “Crown Court” (Two) is very believable. Not only does the script give the actors lines that can be delivered without mental or facial contortion; it also assumes that the audience has a reasonable level of comprehension. This week’s case involves one Captain Stringer, a trawler skipper, who is charged causing the death, through criminal negligence, of a deck-hand. Not ever having been a trawlerperson, its hard to comment on

the accuracy of the pro- . gramme, but the impression one gets is one of extremely thorough research. On Tuesday we were treated to a splendid filmed sequence (quite naturally introduced as evidence for the defence) of a British trawler sailing to the fishing grounds off the Icelandic coast. It looks to ’ be a cold, nasty, and extremely dangerous job. No need with this programme to use props like background music to give us a • clue to what emotions we are supposed to be experiencing, a device in constant use in the soapoperas.

It would be ridiculous to say that all British programmes are better than American ones but the Television New Zealand programming department certainly puts ' on some awful American products in the afternoon.- Particularly when they resort to twenty year old repeats like “Here’s Lucy” (Thursday, One). Lucille Ball wasn’t a Fresh Young Thing even then, and her rather raddled voice sits uncomfortably with the starlet fluttering of the eye-lashes and school-girl cluthing of the handbag. She also has lines which one hopes no script-writer these days would dare to try and get away with: “Washing and ironing is ■woman’s work.” “Harry's no bargain, but at least he’s a man.” “Here’s Lucy” makes even “The Young and the Restless” look good.