A Saturday for the middle years

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 18

A Saturday for the middle years

Review

Douglas McKenzie

Middle-aged battle of the sexes is a perfectly good way of spending a Saturday evening — especially when the struggle is taking place on the screen. ■ "Tales of the Unexpected" (Two) delved into this kind of encounter this week, and "Two’s Company" continued it in the usual way. Roald Dahl's "Tales." declared to be of the sort with bizarre themes, vary so widely in style and impact that the viewer who missed the introduction could well

be uncertain whether he had landed on the correct channel. This, means that the unexpectancy of the tales derives as much from their form as from their development, and the bizarrie may only hinge on viewers finally blinking startled at each other while trying to figure out what happened. The offering this week relied on contrast: "The Orderly World of Mr Appleby.” the hint in the title no doubt being that this world would be vastly upheaved. thus growing bizarre. It was not vintage Dahl. Mr Appleby's past was obscure rather than sinister, and such of it as emerged with any clarity looked messy rather than calculating. Mr Appleby never gave the impression oi being a real threat to the future Mrs Appleby; and. as to Martha Appleby, it was not reasonable that she could know so much about men when she

had been a quinquagenarian spinster. Neither was made to seem an attractive personality: and in the end they could be seen to deserve each other, and to be asking for the fate that each had in store for the other — whatever that was. A much more agreeable half-hour could be spent earlier with Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden in “Two's Company." This mid-Atlantic piece has a habit of being diverting without making a great fuss of it. While Mr Sinden does perhaps overdo the expression of outraged reception when his American mistress (that is. master in the female mode) makes a preposterous New World demand or assessment, nevertheless he carries off the notion of the very English butler with nice counterpoint. This script is devoted to the portraying of both the American and English attitudes in caricature. This calls for a certain broadness in style, but by and large the

idea works: and this is particularly so for observers this far away from the originals. Television's world is full of life styles which have nothing to’do with viewers’ own experiences — think of "Battleship Galactica," for example — so that an upmarket menage of butlers and Rolls Royces seems a proper subject for study and enjoyment provided the viewer doesn't make the mistake of pinching himself. Imagine the loss of dramatic content if the tussle had been not between a Rolls and a Mercedes but between a Holden and a Civic. And the butler had been the kid who comes in to mow the grass.