MEDIA LIST
TELEVISION
SATURDAY 7
0 There is a Happy Land (C4)
8. 15—9pm. Last part of7:84‘s dramatic and musical medley of Scottish history.
0 Saturday Live (C4) iii—11.15pm. Ben Elton (have you noticed how the brilliant young writer is becoming for a sizeable part of the population the man you love to hate?) takes over as the regular host of the returning alternative comedy show.
SUNDAY 8
0 State oithe Art (C4) 8. 15—9. 15pm. Incoherent as an analysis of modern art but nevertheless an interesting sampling ofartists at work in the Eighties. This penultimate episode features ‘investigative journalist' Hans Haake. local community poster makers Lorraine Leeson and Peter Dunn. photographer Victor Burgin and Terry Atkinson whose paintings centre on the issues of the nuclear threat and Northern Ireland. Politics is the linking theme.
0 ‘And Now For Your Sunday Night Dramatic Entertainment' (C4) 9.15-10pm. Those are the words that introduced ITV's prestige dramas of the Sixties. Under the guidance of Canadian Sydney Newman. ABC‘s Armchair Theatre helped to transform television drama. introducing new writers with a new realist approach and concern for issues not seen before on television. This documentary which prefaces a repeat run ofsix of those dramas. looks at some of those writers (Harold Pinter, Alun Owen. Robert Muller and Clive Exton amongst them) and at the behind-the-scenes dramas and technical achievements ofihe series.
0 The South Bank Show (Scottish) 10320—1 1.30pm. Dramatist investigation of the events that surrounded Mary Shelley‘s writing of Frankenstein and influenced gothic horror ever since. Ken Russell’s new film Gothic is also looked at.
MONDAY 9
o The British Record Industry Awards 1987(BBC1)7.3()-9pm. See Rock listings for something better to do.
0 A Year With Fred (BBCZ) 7.40—8.10pm. A new series featuring the homespun but entertaining steeplejack Fred Dibnah proving that he can cope with the dizzy heights of fame as well as chimneys.
TUESDAY 10
0 Harold Macmillan Remembered
(BBCl) 11.3(lam—lpm. Memorial service for the Earl of Stockton with David Dimbleby narrating.
0 Film 87(BBC1)12.05—12.35am. Russel Harty presents and this week it‘s The Fly making him sweat.
0 Crossroads (Scottish) 6.35—7pm. William Smethurst who helped make The Archers on Radio 4 a cult. hopes to be able to breathe new life into dreary old Crossroads. He‘s brought halfhis Archers team with him to help. Watch this motel.
0 Jazz at the Gateway (C4)
1 1.5(lpm—12.3(lam. Last programme in the present series from Edinburgh's Gateway — Oscar Peterson introduces the Morrissey/Mullen group and Norwegians Arild Anderson and RadkaToness.
WEDNESDAY 11
o AskDrRuth((.‘4)11—11.3()pm. Dr Ruth is described as ‘the diminutive
SDCIALISM’S FIRST STEPS
Pioneers oiSocialism. Cd. Saturdays irom 14 February. 8.15pm—9pm.
It is the ideologies oi Socialism, passionately held and persuasively argued which are presented here, ratherthan biographies oi the pioneers. Through the prism at events (c.1880—1932) the ideas at iour men, Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald, John MacLean and James Maxton, all Scots, are brought into iocus and their political responses assembled.
Director Des Bradley deliberately chose to use black and white to lilm dramatised action which is intercut with original iootage. It gives a persuasive sense oi immediacy, an impression oi reportage rather than documentary. The issues involved give it its modernity.
Although biography is not the primary intent, individual characteristics oithe tour useiully emerge irom the detail, the scope and quality olwhich is a credit to the producers. We are told, ior example, that when the revolutionary Marxist and educationalist John MacLean set up courses tor the working classes in Glasgow beiore the iirst World War, he urged them to acquire a thorough understanding oi Marxism, English and Esperanto. The personalities emerge also behind the thrust oi the arguments, in the way they are put in public and in the manner in which they are presented in private. MacDonald ior instance is dramatised both making speeches and quietly coniiding thoughts to his diary. The passionate John MacLean on the other
and effervescent sexologist.‘ Sounds like Anna Raeburn to me. Sex with the stars anyway. Tonight her guest in this US imported show are Jane Seymour and Sergio Frankie.
THURSDAY 12
0 Film on Four (C4) 9-10.50pm. The successful series of filmed drama returns — in its own way as important to the Eighties as Armchair Theatre (being repeated on Suns) was to the Sixties. The first film in the new series is The (Thain written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by Jack Gold. The Chain. a comedy of moving house. is perhaps a slightly too obvious metaphor for the divisions in society. Accomplished caricatures and cameos from a talented cast which includes Warren Mitchell. Bernard Hill and Phyllis Logan.
0 Maya Angelou in Periormance (C4) 11.45pm—12.25am. Best-selling black woman writer in the world (I K no w Why the ( aged Bird Sings etc) and also singer. dancer and poet with her first performance show on British television.
SATURDAY 14
o Pioneers oi Socialism (C4) 8.15—9pm. See Panel.
SUNDAY 15
0 Screen Two: NorthangerAbbey
hand is seen as reilective only when he is in prison, writing to his wile. Political cohesion is not a theme and though the ideas oi the tour touch they don’t iuse. MacDonald, iormer Labour Prime Minister, is ultimately thrown
out oi the party alter cutting unemployment beneiit, whereas Maxton is so outraged when the Tory government withdraws iree milk ior children that he accuses them at murder, and is subsequently suspended irom the House. MacLean eventually becomes isolated in his radicalism.
(BBC2) Catharine Morland in a new film adaptation ofJane Austen’s gothic romance.
WEDNESDAY 18
o Consuming Hunger (C4) Part I (Part II tomorrow) of American director llan Ziv‘s critique of the media‘s reporting ofthe Ethiopian famine. In part his objection is that television treated the famine more like a Hollywood Biblical epic than a news story. The second part turns it attention to Bob Geldofand Live Aid — was it all just a celebration of rock 'n‘ roll and the power of television.
RADIO
The Folk Bands oi Scotland come to Radio 2 on Wed 18 Feb, 8.30pm in the first of a new six-part series. The bands include the Tannahill Weavers, The Boys of the Lough, Ossian, Capercaillie and others, and each introduces a guest soloist representing a part of the Scottish folk world.
While Wagner’s Flying Dutchman is being performed by Scottish Opera in Glasgow and later in Edinburgh (see Classical Music listings), there is a chance to hear another production, also in German, from the Bayreuth
é ‘3 2 E 2 E 8
What emerges torclbly is both the quality and topicality of debate. So much ground seems to have been covered in ideas that it comes almost as a shock in the iourth and final programme to learn that all women are only just being given the vote and that it is still only 1928.
There are some impressive performances and the physical resemblance oi Graham Valentine (to James Maxton) and James Gibb (to MacLean) gives added conviction to a subject skiliully handled. (Sally Kinnes)
The List 6 — 19 February 37