Wily old fox on to a winner

Press, 26 April 1989, Page 19

Wily old fox on to a winner

A.K. Grant

on television

Brian Edwards is sufficiently talented to be endowed with that most flattering of all gifts: differing opinions of him held by various people. Wellington seems to produce individuals like that: Eric Geiringer and Bob Jones are two others, and we would all be poorer without them, whatever we think of the city in which they live and have their being. The multifarious opinions which it is possible to hold about Edwards have a common core, that when it comes to television he is a wily old fox and knows where the jugular is stored. Edwards’s latest show, “Missing” (One, Thursdays), is bound to rate well. The show has everything, or at any rate last Thursday’s did. Two longlost friends were reunited. A long-lost daughter was reunited with her mother and sisters. A most attractive young lady, both as to looks and personality, was reunited with her long-lost lover. One can only hope they are all shareholders in the Reunited. Building Society.

The formula is flawless, and will probably make Edwards a millionaire, because like all great simple inventions, the moment you see it you think, “Surely somebody must have thought of this already?” But as far as I know they haven’t. However, we television critics are wimps at heart, and at stomach, bladder and bowels for that matter, and although I think

the show is a winner, I myself personally, speaking in propria persona and sui generis (and this is only my own opinion, you understand), don’t like it. It is too intimate, too personal: too much is happening in front of the cameras which ought to be occurring in people’s houses without cameras present. I realise that the show is doing good: people are being reunited to their evident delight who wouldn’t be reunited were it not for the power of television, benignly wielded by the omnipotent Dr Edwards. This is, as I say, a wimpish reservation, yet a strongly held one. I shan’t watch the show again: it makes me feel as though I am a prowler, peering in through the windows of somebody else’s house. No such ' scruples bedevil the managing director and chief programmer of TV 1 3/4, the wellknown Christchurch solicitor Mr I. B. Prolix. “Edwards is on to a racing certainty here,” he confided to your reviewer, “and I aim to capitalise on it, by the simple device

of standing the good doctor’s formula on its head. TV 1 3/4, through its programme ‘Missing, and Rightly so’ will bring together in its studio people who have not seen each other for a very long time because they can’t stand each other. Fathers will be brought face to face with sons whom they have rightly disinherited, siblings who detest each other will be reunited, husbands will be confronted with the ex-wives they shot through to Australia to escape. The atmosphere in the studio will be electric! “The only problem is, who do we get to front the show? Do we go for the pleasant professionalism of a Bob Parker, the quizzical professionalism of a Paul Holmes or the totally confrontational professionalism of a Pete Montgomery? Well, we will have to see. But pay your licence fees and get your sets adjusted, folks, because ‘Missing, and Rightly So’ is going to focus world attention on the rim of the Pacific basin, whatever that may be.”