Preparatory classes

Press, 13 February 1987, Page 15

Preparatory classes

In the new season’s array of programmes, Monday night is going to present a straightforward choice between the intricacies of British social life and the dramatic excesses of the televised form of the American equivalent. Rather than make invidious comparisons, this review will concentrate on the older side of the Atlantic, saving new world television for a later date. “Fresh Fields” is one of those pleasantly innocuous sitcoms which fit into an exact bracket — in this case, English lower middle class trivial. Words drag on and on in a never-ending but goodnatured domestic squabble between Julie McKenzie and Anton Rodgers. Most of the words burst out in shrill shouts, tempered by the occasional droll rumble. The humour also fits into an exact bracket — old-fashioned saucy. “What about your drawers?” “We’ll go into the riveting question of my drawers later.”

If you like this sort of thing, it is better to seek it out in "Are You Being Served,” with Mrs Slocum’s pussy. The first “Fresh Fields” revolved around constant jokes about a dog called Randy, none of which is worth repeating. In the end, the dog was the best thing in the programme and had most of the better lines. Later, with “Drummonds,” we moved up a few class notches into a boys’ prep school. People pranced, about saying “rather” rather a lot and “dreadful” a dreadful amount. Many interchanges ended with “quait so,” and everything was very naicely done. It conjures up precisely the atmosphere of these barbaric places in the 19505. Very young children were dropped off into a monastic life of dorms, tuck, surnames, pointless rules and nonsensical respect for people who had done nothing to earn it other than to grow bigger and older. All in crumbling country houses. The actors are perfectly chosen for their parts, purely on the basis of extraordinarily apt names. They all sound as though they hail from the sort of place they are working in. Ciaran Madden, Edward Hardwicke (don’t forget the “e”), Anthony Calf, and even Vanessa Knox-Mawer.

“Drummonds” is really all about George Drummond (Richard Pasco), the headmaster, who runs the school with his son, Charles. The chairman of the board is at him to remarry. “Start looking our for her, hmm.” Although this prompts him to start fancying one of the new mums, he is still locked up in his own prejudices.. “Frankly, I think that the 8.8. C. is becoming slightly pinkish over Suez.”

Charles, his son, has not quite reached his dad’s level of sophistication. He is having it orf with the assistant matron. She speaks a lot about love and he is on the run. “I love you.” “Fine, but I must dash.”

His dad keeps lusting after the new mum, in the naicest, perhaps-you-would -have-dinner-with-me way, of course. In the background, it does not pay to think what the young lads are lusting after, to say nothing of their elders and betters. "Drummonds” is very well done, as all such series are these days. It works well enough to rouse a vast anger at the horror of such places. They work according to the principle that if ten-year-old boys can make sense of the kinky, quirky inadequates who pomp it over them and force them to say prayers, it will make characterful men of them. Or it can cause a roaring amusement at the sillinesses perpetrated by some bits of society.

Tailpiece: Judging from the first night, the new “Eyewitness” News is going to be great. Lindsay Perigo pushed Winston Peters into saying, “That red herring is not going to wash in the public’s eyes.”