Maureen Barnes : Down the tube
Two of the most entertaining weekday series recently have been screened on e.tv. Dalziel and Pascoe is on Friday night at 9pm – a night which the other channels treat as thugs night in and over-excite their audiences by screening kung fu or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
It’s a classic police detective series with a rough, brilliant detective – Dalziel – exasperating and abusing (in the old sense of the word, I must hasten to add) his university-educated side-kick.
Each story is in two parts and the one which ends this week began dramatically with the shocking slaughter of three young people on a tranquil summer evening in a picturesque village. I can’t wait for the dnouement.
The other good series, A Wing and a Prayer, was another in the seemingly unendless string of legal series – most of which I must admit I find lovely escapist entertainment. Set in a firm of English provincial barristers it was an unashamed crib of Kavanagh QC. Not having followed it from the beginning, I’m not sure what the former head of chambers did to lose himself a judgeship, but I think it was something naughty with a tart – isn’t it always? However, on Monday evening when I switched on, ready to learn more, I found that the series had abruptly ended. Pity.
I switched over to SABC3 and watched the start of the new series of Traders instead. Even if you’re not into haute finance don’t miss this intelligent Canadian series about stock brokers. It certainly beats Ally McBeal, and the action doesn’t take place in a unisex loo either.
Why is it that programmes for younger adults always expect their presenters to be hyperactive? Most young adults I know are quite serious and . well, adult . in their behaviour. I’ve been tuning into Options, the “young adult magazine” programme screened on SABC3 on Fridays at 6.30 pm. If you can endure the frenetic James Bond opening shots, they have some worthwhile items.
A week or so ago there was a well-made piece on emigrants who have returned to South Africa after some years away. This week they tackled “old people” with an intro that could have easily referred to the behavioural patterns of the indigenous people of the upper Amazon. However, once that was over, we saw several interviews which were expertly produced by various film companies.
First came film director Dirk de Villiers (75) and still working non-stop. “There are,” he said, “so many pictures I still want to make”. Actor Paul Ditchfield, a youngster at just 60, went for an age measurement test and came out with a functional age of 39, and he looks good too.
A doctor reckoned that the secret of eternal youth was in still having a goal, in other words, something to live for and this seemed to be true of all the people interviewed.
Feisty politician Dame Helen Suzman interviewed by presenter Jenny da Lenta admitted to being 81. She is as attractive and as involved in life as ever. It was, I thought, improper for Da Lenta to address Mrs Suzman as “Helen”, and can’t think of a print journalist who would have done so.
The unnamed interviewer of the remarkable Philip Isaacs made no such error. Mr Isaacs is 93 and still works a full day in his beachfront pharmacy at Camps Bay which he runs unaided. He opened shop there in 1931 and has become, someone said, “a legend in retail pharmacy”. Here again was a man who loves life and his work.
The final interview was with another impressive woman – Peggy Champion, a busy and well-known actress. You’ll know her face from TV even if you don’t know her name.
The lack of years of the scriptwriter was revealed in Nhensani Manganyi’s rather lewd introduction to Ms Champion who, she said, “is still straddling the casting couch at the age of 83”. Nobody on the programme obviously had the foggiest notion of the meaning of the casting couch. I’d like to think it was the innocence of youth but it’s probably because the technique no longer has rarity value.
Discourtesy of another form was the treatment of the superb Welsh Choir which sang the South African national anthem in no fewer than four languages at theWembley match. The camera crew – whether English or South African I don’t know or care – couldn’t be bothered to film their performance but instead gave us shots of ugly rugger buggers.