‘Minder’ looks after the viewer’s tough-guy needs

Press, 13 May 1981, Page 18

‘Minder’ looks after the viewer’s tough-guy needs

FReviewH

Garry Arthur

Why is “Minder” (One, Monday) so much better than, say, “The Professionals”? Both are English toughguy series which rely on violence or the threat of violence for their excitment, both try to leaven the lump with a bit of humour, and both are set in London -- a city which offers every possible kind of location. But “Minder” is the one that rings true. “The Professionals”' is a contrived spin-off from the espionage genre, and it is hard to suspend disbelief in the idea of two such free agents on the rampage in civilised London. “Minder”, on the other hand, presents a pair of Londoners who are totally

believable — East Enders living by their wits, everready to earn a few “sovs” under the counter, no questions asked, and watch out for the old Bill.

It does not actuallyglamorise crime — there was even an internal commercial on Monday from the wife of one crook who could see no future in the criminal life, especially for a husband who kept getting caught. But it does not pretend that crooks are other than ordinary people, either. Arthur, Terry’s “guvnr,” must be typical of hundreds of Londoners in a small way of business, waiting with open arms and eager customers for goods to fall off the back of passing lorries,

doing all their business in “readies” to make sure the taxman is kept at bay, and always happy to do a favour for one of their own — especially if it can be traded off some day for one in return.

Terry is a street-wise Londoner who has seen the error of his earlier ways, but is still not ready to be tied down to a regular job. His distrust of Arthur seems tempered by his loyalty to one who usually comes up with a well-paid job of one kind or another. “Have I ever let you down?” asks Arthur 'in wounded tones whenever Terry seems doubtful. The viewer knows, and Terry suspects, that Arthur has often let him down very badly, but his willingness to try again is apparently accounted for by some slight brain injury sustained during his boxing career. Even so, his inability to see that Arthur is stealing him blind can be very exasperating to watch. “Minder” has many good qualities — not least of them the generous sprinkling of London slang which almost needs a dictionary to be followed, some of it East End Yiddish. But a large part of its appeal must be the sense that here we are seeing life on the fringe of the respectable world.

Its characters, even when in conflict with each other, are linked by their awareness that they co-exist in the same milieu.

Terry summed it up in a rare reflective moment on Monday when he met an old girlfriend outside his old school, and told her that the one thing he had learned there was: “It’s Percival Street against the world.”

The violence in “Minder” seems more necessary to the plot than in many other programmes. After all, Terry is-meant'.to be a paid strong-

arm man. Monday’s choice of a wrecker’s yard for the main fight scene was a clever one; the ranks and stacks of crushed and damaged car bodies had as much menace as the human heavies who had intruded on our heroes’ manor.

Typically, Arthur, although forced to be there, took no part, short of wincing and shuddering as. if every blow had landed on him.

He exemplifies the British knack for creating the small tensions between characters that lift certain programmes above the rest.