Escape training

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 13

Escape training

Review

John Collins

Bernard Hepton has changed sides since the days when he commanded Colditz Castle, and he now commands a restaurant in “Secret Army” (One, Thursday). His leg’has healed, but otherwise there is little change in his wall-eyed peremptory style: and one almost expects to. see his dinner guests trying to escape in a home-made glider or' walking round dripping sand from their trouser legs. Judging from ’’Secret Army,” the war in Belgium took place mainly in restaurants and on trains, possibly as part of some scheme to tie up the German catering and transport corps. So many prisoners of war have been shown in so many Resistance stories escaping on trains that is seems likely the entire European rail system would have gone bankrupt without them. This week two would-be train users were shot, but that sort of eventuality was probably built into the fare structure, and, besides, their tickets were forged.

This programme is lowkey, which means generally slo’w, not unlike “Enemy at the Door,” the first Wehrmacht soap opera. Further, like “Enemy at the Door,” it follows what is now

television orthodoxy on the Second World War: the nasties are all S.S. and Gestapo, all swagger and 1950 s AH Black haircuts, and the average German officer is a uniformed sweetie who would really rather be in Heidelberg growing tulips. Admittedly, the Germans seem to have such good titles of rank that joining up just to get one would be understandable. Earlier on Two in “In Search Of ...” a great white shark was shown biting a diver’s leg off. Since no-one would doubt a great white shark's ability to do that, there seemed’little point tn showing it other than to shock. Instead of the prior warnings, a pair of scissors could usefully have been applied for a film shown so early in the evening.

Australia's coastal waters these days seemed to be mainly populated by madmen in metal cages taking pictures of great white sharks, generally to little avail.

The problem is, a great white shark a few feet away 'from the camera against a backdrop of water comes across as no more impressive than a small grey guppy close to the lens. Understandably, no-one is willing to go

and stand near the shark tv give an idea of scale.

“The Mainland Touch” (Onei made a concerted attempt at attracting a record number of Mrs Grundy letters with a piece on a’ stud farm that was most explicit, beakers of semen and rubber vaginas everywhere. It was an interesting item that no doubt will have the Croxley. running hot for weeks. The commentart' was very jaunty as a dozen or so mares lined up in a row for their gentleman caller. Service with a smile.

“Queen Street” (Two) was an enigmatic mixture of swearing and car crashes and drinking and worrying about whether Cheryl was pregnant or not, against a sort of “American Graffiti” setting of rain-slick streets and old cars. It seemed to be yet another badly done piece of Ministry of Transport propaganda about the correct use of the breathalyser. But it may not have been.

It was virtually impossible, in fact, to make out what it was all about. Cheryl wasn't pregnant, as it turned out.