... ON THE BRADEN BEAT WITH TW3 on vacation this twenty-minute spot from ATV had its chance last Saturday night to add sizeable numbers of viewers to its regular following--it failed. The most heard criticism of TW3 was that it contained too many amateurs and lacked the professional touch. Well any one who was looking at this programme for the first time must have wished that its bit ing, brassy ...

... LONDON PALLADIUM TOP of the bill on last Sunday's production were Phil Ford and Mimi Hines making a return visit to the show. They start out by being quite funny, but then Mimi overdoes the doggy impersonations bit which strains the act at the seams. But they seemed to amuse the Palladium audi ence all right. The zany antics of Tommy Cooper were put on view again, and whatever might be said ...

... 31 BACKYARDS DEING given the role of an un-Australian-like Aus tralian. Ray Barrett made the most of it in a thoughtful production from A-R last Thursday (May 16). That he was outshone by a very good performance by Susan Hampshire was no disgrace. Beginning by taking a rise out of Australian men, it got down to the serious busi ness of examining the rela tionship of a young couple living ...

... MORECAMBE AND WISE SHOW ATV July 20 WHAT a joy to see a programme in which everybody connected with it is so truly professional! The 'mixed mag' type of show all too often includes one or more items that fall below the rest and, once interest has flagged, it seldom can be revived to the same extent. tven wnen maiviuuai per- formers are equally good, some fault of script or of sound balance ...

... SO LONG, CHARLIE BBC tv June 2 THE relationships between people who inhabit bed sitters continue to occupy television writers. Few cover the exact same ground but most try to put over a mes sage. Some of these dramas have relied heavily on interpretation from the viewer and others on the straightforward introduc tion and delineation of char acters. Alan Plater's play on Sunday somehow fell ...

... ITifilSl ALL THINGS BRIGHT BEAUTIFUL PHOENIX THEATRE (PEGGY MOUNT, JOHN BARRIE, GRIFFITH DAVIES, BRIAN PECK, JULIET COOKE) THE SPONGE ROOM AND SQUAT BETTY ROYAL COURT THEATRE (JILL BENNETT, GEORGE COLE, ROBERT STEPHENS) MR. WATERHOUSE AND MR. HALL HAVE BEEN working away like tiny beavers for our entertainment and have gnawed into shape one play and two playlets. The first is a comedy with ...

... mm 111 THERE'S NOT MUCH OF A STORY IN MISS JOAN Littlewood's Sparrows Can't Sing-- which she has made rather as a series of salty vignettes than a cohesive whole-- but there is a performance by Miss Barbara Windsor which makes it absolutely imperative that you should see this jolly, raucous film of Cockney life down Stepney way. With her little roly-poly hgure bulging out her skin tight ...

... lining THE SECOND EXHIBITION AT THE NEW COMMON wealth Institute art gallery is New Art From Rhodesia but it is the first to give us some idea of what sort of thing we may hope to see there in the future. The opening show, an anthology of contemporary paint ing and sculpture from 24 Commonwealth countries, was designed to make an appro priate initial splash and pressed into ser vice a ...

... NOW-- THE LIVERPOOL LOOK ROBERT WRAIGHT I am sitting in the vast, jazzed- up Victorian tea-room of Liver pool's best hotel, where the four-piece orchestra is, I swear it, playing the Blue Danube. I am here in an effort to recover, with the help of a pot of china tea, from some lavish lunch- time hospitality provided by Mr. John Moores and I am thinking how peculiarly Eng lish it is that the ...

... THE TRAINING methods des cribed in Gundogs by Michael Brander (A. & C. Black, 21s.), based on discussions with Mr. John Forbes and Mr. John Brown, will commend themselves to any one with experience of gundogs and the photographs clearly illus trate many of the methods recom mended, but the weakness of the book, in this reviewer's opinion, is that it is difficult to find out what sort of dog is ...

... A new edition of Life of the Wayside and Woodland (Warne, 30s.) by Dr. T. R. E. Southwood, brings up to date the popular seasonal guide to the natural history of the British Isles which, written by the late T. A. Coward, first appeared in 1923. As Dr. Southwood points out in his preface, scientific research since the original book appeared has made it necessary for him to provide an almost ...

... ERIC ENNION, whose Countryman' s Log articles are such a popular feature of Farm & Country, has a practical, although kindly (as distinct from sentimental) approach to ornithology. This is, of course, the hallmark of the true naturalist as opposed to what may reasonably be described as the bird worrier-- the person with a little learning who stamps about with the best of intentions and the ...