Dribs and drab

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 15

Dribs and drab

' Having provided itself, at evident enormous expense, with a Los Angetesbased Auckland news item called Dr Milan Brych, Television New Zealand is a t present, and has been for some time, sawing off little bits of this nightly. There seems to be no obvious reason, judging by the justification for its incessant screening so far, that this serial will ever finish. This subject, which the right-thinking section of the news media called the newspapers has properly dropped until something factually happens in the story, is guaranteed to stir in viewers no reaction beyond a dull ache between the eyes. It might be less wearing if television got off in one go all the stored footage in this matter, and so made an end to it. As it is, Dr Brych is forever being placed in front of the camera for minutes at a time while a voice-over explains what hasn’t happened; and then he breaks out into what Audrey fforbes-Hamilton would undoubtedly call incomprehensible Bratislavan.

There are times when Auckland seems even farther from Christchurch than . it need be; if Auckland is really convinced that it has an item which must be screened it still has an opportunity on its regional programme called “Top Half.” Of course, “To the Manor Born” (Two, Tuesdays until now), since it has been mentioned, depends almost entirely

for its entertainment on the peculiarly English fascinations of accent and class. It’s easy to think of examples, innit? Try to imagine the interest in a straight Pam Ayres. But Penelope Keith is an original. Her Mrs fforbes-Hamilton is so preposterous as to be unassailable. She instantly dismisses the plate as E.P.N.S. Ah, the knowledge, the style. It must be any time now that, to Marjory, she will condemn an acquaintance as “N.Q.0.C.” (not quite our class). "All Creatures Great and Small” (One) does for the countryside what “The Manor” would be affronted to be expected to recognise. The only pink coats worn in "Creatures” are those which have brushed an animal wound. Something about “Creatures” suggests that it would instantly have been at home as “Dr Herriot’s Casebook.” Findlay and Cameron, of immortal memory (as Cameron himself often said in another context), also had a housekeeper, and an old car when you look at it today, and patients. Herriot and Farnon don’t have a “Doctor,” but that’s easily rectified. The Americans, and even the

Australians, are working on it all the time.

Any dentist hearing from the United States will have the material addressed to him as “Dr”, and vets can’t be far behind. There is a strong case for the vets to be given every backing as savers of lives. Anyone who can tap a clinical thermometer up the rectum of a bull terrier and get away with it deserves the bestowal of any title he cares to nominate.

So if Dr Herriot, wearing a white coat, likes to lean back and yarn to Dr Farnon while successfully registering a temperature by only the light pressure of two retaining fingers under the terrier’s tail, that should be enough to engage any viewer’s respect, and a fee to match. If the vocabulary didn’t get in the way, the “Creatures” story this week could have been called a very human one; it involved a most’ ins convenient kennel call to which both doctors responded with a readiness amounting almost to nobility in view of the fact that they were about to leave for an important social occasion and were trussed up variously in evening dress and dinner jacket, both with boiled shirts; - ;

Britain had just given its guarantee to Poland, so the formality of a nation descending into war could be observed. It might be significant, though, that one item of clothing then worn was not termed a tank top but an undervest.