... HANCOCK'S HALF-HOUR BBC-TV THE first of the new series of Hancock's Half-Hour gave the Lad's fans many opportunities of enjoying his clever impressions and characterisations and it was good to have his famous hangdog expression on our screens again. Tonv found himself once more in the clutches of that arch wide- boy Sidney James, who this time saw himself as a producer of epic films. His ...

... 'SATURDAY SHOWTIME' I ICIIARD HEARNE is good I I value for money He made three appearances on commercial TV in four days last week Thursday in a prc-Klnieri Moulin Rouge show from Paris, Satur day in Showtime and Sunday in pantomime. Despite this, his Pastry neer got stale. On Saturday he appeared as Richard Hearne. only to find that the cameraman who was making a mess of his TV picture was Mr ...

... 'MOTHER GOOSE' WHILE a visit to the local pantomime is a number one priority just now in many homes up and down the country, those youngsters whose parents were lenient enough to allow them to stay up and watch Val Parncll's Mother Goose, on ATV's Sunday Night at the London Palladium, had an extra helping of the traditional Christmas enlcrtain- ment fare. Television's Mother Goose was a ...

... TONY HANCOCK G.I. Your reviewers for this week arc Eric Johns and Derek Hoddinott. IN THE TITLE-ROLE of Nikolai Gogol's comedy, The Government Inspector, on BBC-TV on Sunday evening last Tony Hancock ran a magnificent race with John Phillips, resulting in a neck-to-neck photo-finish. Adapted into easy-sounding dia logue by Barry Thomas from the English version by D. J. Campbell, this ...

... Harold Darton's Edited by DEREK HODDINOTT COMMERCIAL SPOT DID you sec the 30-second Acrilan advertisement last Thursday night? In case you didn't, I'll give you a resume of what it was all about. In fact, in case you did. I'll also give you a resurnd of what it was all about. It was one of those ads, you see. which pass right over A Weekly Column About Actors and Advertising on Television ...

... TV BECOMES INTELLIGENT 'The Liberators' Has Something To Say THE LIBERATORS, the first of a cycle of four plays entitled The Promised Years, written especially for television by lain MaoCormick, is a thoughtful, human, competently written piece of work, basically concerned with a conflict between conscience and the expediency of war. The setting is an Italian farm house in 1945. The C.O ...

... RICHARD AFTON will present a Coronation Music Hall on the Saturday preceding the Coronation from the stage of the Shepherd's Bush Empire, on May 30. It will be televised from JO p.m. tiU 12 midnight. All the artists on the bill have performed before Royalty, either at the Palladium or in Command Shows at Windsor. There will bo two comperes, Terry-Thomas and Ted Ray. The exceptionally big bill ...

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... 'MUSIC FOR YOU' THE LAND OF SNOW' sequence from Tchaikovsky's 'Casse-Noisette' ballet was the highlight of Eric Robinson's Music for You' programme on Christmas Night on BBC-TV. Alfred Rodrigues staged a version specially for television; it was danced by the Ballet Rambert, with Marina Svetlova and Oleg Briansky as soloists. It failed to get across, partly because the rtitire ballet was ...

... 'HENRY V' SIMPLICITY was the keynote of Peter Drews' production of Shakespeare's Henry V. which launched the B.B.C.'s ambitious Television World Theatre programme on Sunday last. Mr. Drews never lost Sight of the fact that the work was a play--to be seen on a stage, with imaginative touches of scenery such as Guy Sheppard created for this produc- tion. John Neville played the title-role ...

... IN VISION LAST week The Alan Young Show came to a grinding halt. Apart from the previous misery inflicted on viewers by this series Mr. Young topped the lot by making one of the most outrageous, unashamed plugs I have vet seen on television. At the end of a train sketch Mr. Young said good night to viewers and then came back again to say that he had forgotten something. What was it? The fact ...

... 'MR. VENUS NOT FOR ITV IN a recent natiooaJ newspaper it 1 was stated that a ninety-minute cxcerpt from Mr. Vervus was going to be seen. According to all the main ITV companies, ATV. Granada TV, Associated-Rediffusion and ABC-TV this is not true. The only thing to be seen from Mr Venus on television will be this weekend ill ATV's Sunday Night at the London Palladium, when a song from the ...