Investigative or prurient?

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 19

Investigative or prurient?

Ken Strongman

on television

Last Thursday proved that the video recorder is fast becoming a necessity rather than a luxury. With all the rather unpleasant and unfortunately titillating build-up, it would have been almost churlish to miss the special “Close Up.” Yet it overlapped with the first episode of "Bulman,” which, in its turn, overlapped with the final episode of “Blackadder.” If the licence fee is to rise to more than $125, the programmers will have to do better than that.

“Close Up” did get its message across, raising important and basic issues about the justice system. However unpalatable it might be, there are some small pockets in our society that are full of things which cannot be dealt with by the resources available to us. There is a long-lasting

problem with what to do about those who were once called the criminally insane. At best this is awkward; at worst it can lead to the horrors of the Bennett case.

The problem with the “Close Up” documentary, even though it was not bad investigative journalism, was, and is, Genevieve But-how-did-you-feel-at-the-time Westcott. Her approach constantly borders on the sensational, even the salacious. It was interesting, not to say riveting, to have the victim give such explicit descriptions of her experiences, and to have her attacker’s family apparently being so frank, but it smacked more than slightly of the prurient. In the end, it comes down to an increasing tendency for journalists such as Ms Westcott to prompt those that they

interview into emotional displays on camera. Of course, it is difficult not to watch someone breaking down as she relives harrowing experiences, particularly if one is observing this from the uninvolved safety of the living room. But this really is crude sensationalism. It is intrusive, demeaning and debasing. Perhaps any question which begins with “But how did you feel when ...” should be banned from television.

By contrast with this, “Bulman” looks as if it will be a fine replacement for “Strangers.” Don Henderson is first rate as George Bulman. He is gravely, unprepossessing and, at times, crude, but has the soul of a poet and the charming ingenuousness of a young child with stars in his eyes. At one moment he quotes Shakespeare and at the next, he

can say “On yer bike” with the best of them.

George has left the Met. and his gloves (which seemed to somehow distance him from the less salubrious aspects of police work) behind him. He could no longer stand modem police work not being a matter of Maigret individualism. But crime and the murky ways of the crims and the rozzers will not leave him alone. He is trying to settle down to make a clock hospital, but no-one, including the very Scottish daughter of an ex-copper from the same mould as George, will let him. Clearly, he is going to be a private eye, in spite of a preference for balance wheels and mainsprings. There is not much to “Bulman,” but he is such a very good character that the programme will work, just as "Strangers”

did. He eats good food, but smothers it in HP, which he then sluices down with fine wines. He can quote poetry, but can never quite remember the distinction between alias and alibi. Most of all, he has a self-tutored turn of phrase which must give the script writers great pleasure to create. “Citizen to citizen, pillock, you tried to shoot me today.” But then, gazing into the innerself, “Every man is an island.”

The last place that “Blackadder” would gaze at is the innerself; his supreme confidence makes that unnecessary. Sadly, he has finished the series and it is only to be hoped that Atkinson will return in another reincarnation to work his way through whatever remains of history, rewriting it as he goes. The final episode was full of marvellous lines, from “No speako

dago” to a member of the Spanish inquisition, to “I accept nothing from a man who imprisons me in a commode.” Best of all, though, was the ultimate description of feeling ill, “My head feels like there’s a Frenchman living in it.” In its way, this image was almost as disturbing as some of those created by “Close Up.”