A good oldfashioned ding-dong

Press, 6 December 1985, Page 9

A good oldfashioned ding-dong

[Review]

Ken Strongman

With enormous dedication, to the extent of eschewing the late night cricket, except for a quick peek during the adverts, Monday’s “The Bell” had to be watched. Breaking into Iris Murdoch’s fiction, however good it might be, is a little like stepping into an encounter group. Social and psychological caution is thrown to the winds as people have RELATIONSHIPS. Noel and Dora and Paul and Toby and a host of lesser, but no less mixed up characters, are messing one another about in what looks like the late 19505. Everyone is very serious and the setting is a big stone house called Imber. Inside, there are prayers and classical music, with furrowed brows. Outside, people cavort on lawns and dive into water. “Oh yes, I just came out before the last movement.” No, don’t ask from whence. Television is becoming very polished and “The Bell” is a first rate example of the art. There is meticulous attention to detail and an absolutely thoroughgoing Englishness pervading all. Nothing much happens, but it takes an enormous time about it, in spite of trouser-creased elegance. It is all about a very heavy, although precious, exploration of feelings. In the foreground, impeccably dressed people reflect one another’s unhappiness. In the background, Michael delivers a sermon in the proper drone with all of the usual life-is-like-a-tin-of-sar-dines analogies. Then, everyone is sitting round a refectory table eating limp salad and discussing mechanical engineering whilst planning a procession.

The language of “The Bell” is Iris Murdoch at her adapted-for-teievision best. “Fortunately, it has always been a minor gift of mine to recall everything I’ve said.” Iris Murdoch is right; there were people in the 1950 s and 1960 s who spoke with such pretention. Later, “I find him a trifle rebarbative at times.” Even one of the other characters had to ask what he meant, let alone the viewer. Then, occasionally, someone thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of his flannels and strides off urgently and the whole thing is in danger of becoming “Five go mad in Dorset”. Although "The Bell” is very well produced it is one of those series in which the

camera adopts odd positions. Frequently, it is at waist height, looking up nostrils. This somehow makes all that repressed emotion seem even more searing than if it is viewed at eye level. Dragon fumes could appear at any moment. Beneath the repressed emotion, there is a strong hint of even more deeply repressed sexuality, something which is always bubbling and glurping in the subconscious of Ms Murdoch’s fiction.

Everything is very obviously Freudian. It doesn’t take much to interpret the possible meaning which might lie behind a great deal of creeping about in the night trying to dredge up an old bell from the river bed. This was preceded by a scene in which a female, in a surprising mixture of arch nonchalance, flashed her thighs at an almost member of the cloth. He was not unmoved, for hours.

When the bell was raised, Dora said “I’d no idea it’d be so huge.” And, by golly, we all know what she was getting at there. So did Toby, the fellow bell-raiser, who was at her in a flash. Mind you, it was enormous. Then they kissed, as shouldn’t, and writhed about a bit, under the bell, and as the luck of such fiction would have it, they were overseen.

In the end, almost everyone was lurking about in the bushes in the middle of the night. In the face of all this exploration of feelings and self-indulgent soul-search-ing, it was hardly surprising that no-one could sleep. Their main problem though is simple—there aren’t enough women to go around. Amazing that they cannot see it. Still, it looks as though some of them might discover alternative sexualities.

Don’t take this all too seriously. “The Bell” is very good, a little like the classical music of television fiction. It is intricate, complex, perfectly formed, and very definitely an acquired taste. Other things being equal, things at Imber are rather limber.