Maureen Barnes Down the tube
The Emmy Awards – the Hollywood TV industry’s mutual back-scratching night out – took three-and- a-half hours to screen, and this was the edited version. In that amount of time, I imagine, the Almighty created a sizeable chunk of the earth and the creatures thereon.
Having been caught before, I recorded it, so I was able to fast- forward most of the acceptance speeches given by the incredibly surprised recipients, especially if they were read off bits of paper.
Readers of this column will be chuffed to know that both Camryn Manheim and John Larroquette won awards for their work in The Practice. Manheim was voted the best supporting actress in a drama series (she plays the plump attorney and accepted the award “on behalf of all the fat girls”) and Larroquette the best guest actor in a drama series – he played the gay psycho. Best of all, The Practice won the Emmy for best drama series in stiff competition with ER, Law and Order, NYPD Blue and The X-Files.
Seeing both NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Streets still right up there at the top made me wonder why we haven’t seen these two excellent series on our screens lately. Andre Braugher – the exquisitely dressed black cop with the shiny kop in Homicide – won the best actor in a drama series award.
All most satisfying.
Less satisfying was watching one of my favourite interviewers, Manu Padyachee, doing a biased bit on Carte Blanche in favour of smoking adverts and sounding as upset as pro-smoking Neill Jacobsohn at the proposed ban.
We were given numbers of poor people who will be out of work if cigarette advertisements are banned and, low blow this, how many sporting fixtures would be cancelled because of want of sponsors. We were not given the numbers who die from smoking-related diseases, nor the cost to the surviving taxpayers of treatment.
Being one who became addicted to tobacco as a shy teenager after watching endless glamorous lifestyle adverts, I am definitely biased against advertising tobacco. I was hooked by the sophisticated golden girls – tanned, curvy, draped on yachts, surrounded by handsome guys and having a great time – all with smoke curling out of their nostrils. To be like them was my dream; unfortunately, the only part I achieved was the fag end.
The effort it took, some 15 years later, to kick the habit, has left me with a halo for having achieved it and a residual sympathy for addicts.
We had to listen to endless guff from Jacobsohn about the democratic rights of smokers “to know”, and how they’d be denied information if they weren’t allowed to see cigarette adverts. What knowledge is being denied them? The slow, real-life death suffered by the handsome American outdoorsman in a famous cigarette advert? That’s knowledge. The coughing? The emphysema? That’s knowledge too. It must be noted here that nobody was suggesting banning cigarettes, just the adverts. It was a bit much, I thought, to compare the present government’s proposed ban on cigarette advertising with the banning policy of the previous regime, but I gather the cigarette industry is a bit desperate.
Jacobsohn, who sounded like Disgusted of Sandton, told us he didn’t want to live in an undemocratic country, which makes you wonder if he’s had his hearing aid switched off for the past four decades. He was, he told us, going to “shuffle off this mortal coil” if he was denied his right to enjoy adverts. Well, one thing’s for sure, his mortal coil will shuffle off a bit quicker if he puts a fag in his mouth.
Not to be missed is the new series of Clive James Specials which is at the rather awkward time of 2.30pm on Saturday afternoons on SABC3. It deserves a repeat at, say, 7pm on a weekday. This week he was again in Melbourne and it was impossible not to guffaw loudly as he met an ageing surfer, went rowing on the Yarrow with the university team and hobnobbed with the Aussie jet set at the Melbourne Cup. He manages to send up the ridiculous without being offensive.
James is my hero for another reason – he was television critic of the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, and is arguably the best television critic there ever was. His articles – published in several volumes by Picador, if they’re still available – make superb reading, even if you never saw the programmes to which he refers. He’s wry, observant and highly intelligent – all attributes which come across on TV. Don’t miss it.