... ARTHUR ASKEY SHOW 'T'HE idea behind Arthur Askey's new series (Saturday. March II. ATV) was good. But somehow the show did not really come up to expectations. This was no fault of Arthur Askey who, as Arthur Pilbeam. appeared to put a great deal of effort into his part of a man- eater Nor was June Whit field, as his genteel snobby wife, who drops her a itches to blame. Both gave equally ...

... AYR HOLIDAY REVUE ONE of the brightest shows to breeae into the Gaiety for a decade, the new holiday revue has been drawing packed audiences since it opened on December 11. Tbe show has had excellent receptions, with the box-office also proving the high popularity of the young Scottish singer-comedian Andy Stewart, who made such a meteoric rise in the entertainment firmament in 1961. It is the ...

... Perfect little cameos THE SIN SHIFTER IT'S rather like picking numbers out of a hat--deciding which facet of The Sin Shifter (ABC, September 16th) appealed to me the most. was h ine script. ngnt- heartedly baiting the idealogies of the Mother Church while sympathetically tugging at the heart-strings over the plight of a Wanton Woman Was it the cast, each turning in perfect little cameos of ...

... Camino Real Granada Network, January 27. LOGIC is no use in understanding Camino Real. It registers with the emotions not the intellect. There among the tortured. confused souls on the Real you keep finding bits and pieces of yourself--bits and pieces vou normally prefer to. keep submerged in your sub conscious. Tennessee Williams has the ability to hook them out and trail them before you. ...

... Mr. Packard his albatross ■gg j Bl VANCE PACKARD SEEMS TO ME TO BE rapidly turning into the Ancient Mariner of our times, gripping us by the collective elbow and pouring into our appalled ears yet another gripping instalment about the nasty habits and attitudes that are currently frightening him to death. He also has a splendid gift lor pinning chic-sounding labels on the monstrous activities ...

... music Organising the Edinburgh Festival must be the hottest job in the arts business. It is not only still the biggest there is; it offers no clear-cut brief, except comprehensiveness. People tend to judge it more on what's been left out than what's gone in, and if you can keep half of them happy for any of the time, you are doing pretty well. This said, only modified rapture for Mr Peter Dia- ...

... THE NEW PENGUIN BATCH PLEASES me so much this week that we'll begin with them, and especially with Cyril Connolly's dazzling There's all manner of skulduggery afoot in The Secret Partner-- and dust is thrown in everybody's eyes, including yours-- but I must say I found Mr. Stewart Granger's odd behaviour suspicious from the start. 1 mean, would you continue to patronize a dentist who is black ...

... THEhTRE FIRST FIVE: 1 World Theatre Season, Aldwych. 2 Man Superman. 3 Arsenic and Old Lace. 4 How's the World Treating You? 5 Hello Dolly! On Easter Monday 10 years ago the Royal Court Theatre opened its doors to the first performance given by the English Stage Company. The policy was to present plays by new writers and their open ing choice fell on The Mul berry Bush, by novelist Angus ...

... FIRST FIVE: 1 Elektra, Covent Garden (Thurs Tues). 2 LPO, Festival Hall Thurs 3 St Matthew Passion, Festival Hall (Fri). 4 LPO, Svetlanov, Festival Hall (Tues). 5 RPO, Swiss Cottage Odeon (Tues). Alan Rawsthorne is probably the only living composer who started out as a dentist. Paren tal opposition, he records in Who's Who, delayed his entry into ; his father, a doc tor, thought medicine a ...

... riuin One important thing that a Harold Pinter script gives to a film is personality. One can rely on the dialogue to be off beat, but all on a similar plane. To a chilly, compelling and rather sharp new spy thriller called The Quiller Memoran dum (A, Odeon Leicester Square, currently), Pinter contributes a faintly mocking, faintly menacing collection of words that give the characters ...

... REC0RD5 Verdi: Requiem (RCA Victor. Stereo: SER 5537-8). This perform ance will certainly collect innumerable admirers. Though Verdi's operatic treatment of the Messa da Requiem is now accepted as an expression of true faith--a man speaking in the language he knows, and thus being completely true to himself--there are still a number of people who find the nervous dramatic approach of Toscanini ...

... Boy-country No-man's-land m IN A BOOK THAT could have been gimmicky or sentimental or souped- up with any number of singing strings in the background, Sammy Going South, the author, W. H. Canaway, never puts a foot wrong. It's a simple, dangerous-journey adventure-story, with the one big difference that the adventurer is a small boy of 10, orphaned during Suez and in search of his only ...