Adding tomato soup to tomato soup

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 15

Adding tomato soup to tomato soup

“Legacy” on Wednesday evening made a brave attempt to deal with the issue of “Pommies.” Given the nature of the programme it was a subject which had to be tackled, but given the nature of New Zealand it was a difficult subject to boil down to an hour’s worth of television.

Although many of us are not descended from Pommies, most of us are, and so the programme had to deal with the impact on people of British stock of a society founded by and largely composed of people of British stock. It was a bit like trying to analyse what happens to tomato soup when you add some more tomato soup to it Dave Smith and Austin Mitchell did their best Roger Hall, who knows a great deal about this sub-' ject, contributed a part of

a play, but one ended the programme only slightly better informed and not very much wiser. The programme was distinguished, as the

whole series is, by the excellent presentation of Michael Anthony Noonan, whose responsible bearing on television shows just how possible it is for people to exhibit different facets of themselves at different times of their life. Looking at Noonan’s perfectly cut hair,' observing his neatly trimmed beard, and listening to his measured cadences, it was hard to believe that this was the same wild Irishman whose exploits delighted many far more timorous students at Canterbury and Otago in the early sixties. Dylan Thomas, one felt, had been transformed into Melvyn Bragg. “Paradise Postponed” finally ceased postponing itself on Sunday. "Paradise Postponed,” come to think of it, would not be a bad title for Noonan’s

series. Paradise has certainly been postponed for the duration in this country, and part of the problem is that none of us knows how long the duration is likely to be.

John Mortimer’s sad account of the decline of idealism and communal social aspirations in Britain was deeply depressing, even though the loathsome Leslie Titmuss finally got a come-

uppance of a sort The trouble is that Leslie is essentially Mrs Thatcher in drag, and appears highly likely to be elected to a further term of office on June 11. Sometimes democracy,; although the least bad of all the available alternatives, exhibits the grim inevitability of a hangover. The series was graced, as most major British

series are, by excellent acting. . Peter Egan was splendid as the Kingsley 1 Amis character: at least I I assume Henry was in- I tended to be a Kingsley 1 Amis character, a Left- i wing novelist who turns 1 into a Right-wing novelist : (One hopes that Henry’s I political odyssey does not affect his novel-writing in < ' the; way: that Amis has 1 been •• affected. His most i recent , hovel, “The Old t

Fools,” which won the Booker Prize, is by. far the worst and most boring book he has ever published.) And Michael Hordern played the Michael Hordern part as though he had learned his craft from Michael Hordern himself. “Barney Miller” screens on Two on Wednesdays at 11.30 p.m. Last year your reviewer was privileged to attend a TVNZ seminar

conducted by Noam Pitlik. the director of “Barney Miller.” IChat is no reason why everybody else should stay up till midnight to watch "Barney Miller.” The reason why everybody should stay up till midnight to watch "Barney Miller” is because it is one of the three or four best sitcoms ever made. If your reviewer had his or her way (basically I mean “his way” but I don’t want to be accused of sexism), “Barney Miller” would screen every Saturday afternoon, immediately before the weekly screening of Astaire and Rogers in “Top