Horse-rider to famous nurse

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 16

Horse-rider to famous nurse

F

John Collins

“I've been resting all day. A jounce is good for me,” said Dorothy Tutin, brushing aside warnings about over-vigorous horse riding at the beginning of “Sister Dora” (Two, Monday), almost nudge-nud-ging the camera in case there was some doubt that wu were entirely referring to point-to-point, and perspiring with a sort of prim fervour that marks her portrayal of the unhappy Dora, and, indeed, any other role I can recall seeing her in. Torn between the primness brie ' niight expect from the daughter of an insane Victorian vicar — daughters of insane Victorian vicars are known for their primness — and vague, unexpressed jouncing ambitions, indicated by giveaway swoons as a certain, purchas (Burgess?) chopped photogenically away at the firewood like some misplaced Marlboro man, Sister Dora spent the first episode of this threepart dressing-up drama in a state of confusion equalled only by that of the viewer, and possibly Burgess (Purchas?). For light relief, she talked to the sea at one point, alone on a cliff, but another suitor turned up to whisk her away. Things hadn’t been going all that well with the sea anyway, apparently: “Conversation with the sea begins to pall after a little. Waves lose their wit in November,” she admitted.

It’s probably the cold or all that sliding up and down beaches. Give me a

good lake for a nice chat any day. Those who have resorted to the "Listener” know that “Sister Dora” is based on the life of Dorothy Pattison, “who rose from a troubled childhood to become one of the world’s greatest nurses,” so an episode or two can be expected of whispering understandingly in a candlelit ward while wounded soldiers shout off-camera for water. Dorothy Tutin seems ideally suited to it. You can almost smell the carbolic.

Bamber Gascoigne (whose name was, apparently, designed by a committee the chairman of which went on to invent .Scrabble and die a millionaire recluse) continued his superb history of Christianity in “The Christians” (Two). He was in his. element with the Reformation, sprinkling his story of Luther and Calvin with the sort of dry, detached comments that would make this series outstanding even without its immense evidence of research, clarity of narration, and consistently right choice of location and illustration.

Strangely — perhaps, sadly, not strangely — the latest ratings show that the pews before Bamber are very sparsely populated, most of the congregation preferring to attend the wooden and preposterously pretentious “The Sandbaggefs” (One), whose code I never quite cracked. When a first-rate production such as “The Christians” can be ignored. it makes one wonder if the viewing public doesn’t deserve the plague of repeats Television New Zealand passes off as summer viewing. Mhny t New Zealand viewers, in particular, if thpy had not been 'Sandbagged, would have found an interesting air of familiarity in comments on the

conduct of Calvin (“supervising every tiny detail of the lives of the 1 unfortunate citizens”) and on Knox (“anyone who disagreed with him was already half-way to Hell”). Archbishop Reeves, sandbagged on the 6.30 News by the Prime Minister for criticising Mr Couch’s Waitangi Day efforts, may well have been watching. “The Most Beautiful Run in the World” (One) had the distinction of being one of the few ambitious local sports films •to be screened in the same week as the event. Such is the recent record of sports coverage, I presumed, on seeing this programme advertised, that it would be coverage of last year’s Auckland Marathon, not this year’s. Marathon running, like • cycling, is scarcely thrill-a-minute for the spectator, let alone the participant. But lots of nice close-ups of agony made for a satisfying piece of film for the enthusiast and the sadistic viewer alike, and the device of having participants describe how they were feeling as film. was shown of them wobbling and wincing through spectacular scenery worked wonders for what might have been a drab record of a sport whose essence is hard to capture on camera. It is good to see Dick Quax, who reverted during a bad patch two or three ' years ago from being a Kiwi sporting hero to being just another Dutch immigrant, making the transition back to Kiwi sporting hero again.