... Excellent direction to match excellent script THE BACHELORS BBC-2, Thursday, April 1 MURIEL SPARK has a deceptively simple writing style, limpid and economical. She writes good dialogue, and that makes her novels unusually satisfactory for dramatisation. Add to that the more solid virtues of strong theme, plot and characterisation, and an individual and imaginative view or life, and the ...

... Caters weil for an escapist audience now it is simpler CROSSROADS ATV, Friday, September 17 WHEN I looked at this show last January I observed that it was too complicated, required too many scene changes to accommodate shreds of different story lines, and that the director's shifts from scene to scene were slow and awkward. After eight months Hazel Adair's and Peter Ling's saga of motel life ...

... MY VIEW by BILL EDMUND ASK ANY NEIGHBOUR THE moral of this story by Tony Williamson from ABC last Sunday is that if you have a housewarming party as Linda and Michael Dawson did 'Jack Hedlcy and Angela Browne) you should bolt the door against such guests as Joe Kendrick (Ronald Lewis) and Martin James (Barrie Ingham) And hard as it would be to slam the door in the face of such an attractive ...

... Happy union of comedy and actors MARRIAGE LINES BBC-1, Sunday, August 22 LET us be grateful for the reappearance of Richard Waring's accounts of life in the Starling family. What's in a Name introduced the new member of the household, six-month-old daughter Helen, and the problems incident with planning far her christening. George (Richard Briers), that struggling young professional man. ...

... Fast, funny and full of surprises Not Only But Also BBC-2, Saturday, January 23 NOT only was this the funniest, but also, surely, the shortest 45 minutes of light entertainment of the current television season. Number followed number at racing speed, and at the end we yearned for more. But it was, of course, just the right length. Dudley Moore and Peter Cook had control of the whole ...

... The Image Rediffusion, Monday, Jan. 25 KENNETH HILL'S idea is good although not newthat most people create or try to create images of themselves to present to the world, false fronts to hide behind or to impress other people. And by correlating the general practice with the particular front of the salesman he could give the idea specific forms and the charac ters sharp outlines. ...

... Slick professionalism was entirely lacking in this episode THE DICKIE HENDERSON SHOW Rediffusion, Thursday, Mav 20 IF The Dickie Henderson Show had not set itself out to be so determinedly mid-Atlantic it would not now be suffering so painfully in comparison with the Dick Van Dyke Show which in framework it resembles considerably. The indigenous family ute comedies like Meet The Wife and ...

... More comedy than suspense MRS. QUILLEYS MURDER SHOES ATV, Sunday, May 23 BILLED under Suspense Hour, Barry Thomas's play was longer on comedy than on suspense. It started propitiously, with Fenella Fielding, chic in furs and picture hat with veil, elegantly thumbing a ride in a hearse manned by crepe-hatted gentlemen and complete witn coffin. A suitable conveyance for a lady going to tea to ...

... Tense, dramatic start to Stendhal serial THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK BBC-2, Sunday, May 9 A TENSE and dramatic start heralded this new serial adapted from Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir by Michael Barry. A young man enters a church and shoots a woman almost on the altar steps. His life is told in flashbacks as the witnesses at his trial give their evidence. At first, when these flashbacks ...

... Strictly for the faithful viewer CROSSROADS ATV, Thursday, Mav 6 THIS series is strictly for the loyal and ever-faithful viewer. It lacks attraction for anyone who can watch it only occasionally. For instance, on Thursday afternoon I arrived smack in the middle of at least three puzzles so I watched the nexi instalment late tne same evening hoping for enlightenment. The chief of the ...

... Non-British flavour about Gideon GIDEON'S WAY ATV. Saturday. Mav 8 THIS particular story. The Great Plane Robbery by Alun Falconer, never lived up to the promise of its first few minutes. Film studio resources can provide exciting outdoor action such as is usually beyond the scope of the average television studio-produced series and it is in such moments that Gideon's Way excels. The series ...

... Dennis at his best in a good first play THE CONFIDENCE COURSE BBC-1, Wednesday, February 24 AS a first play for television, this was a good one. Dennis Potter has shown himself to be a writer of words worth listening to. He seemed, however, not to know what point he was making or how to end it off. Dean is Price played the Director of a confidence course, and his saleable assets were his own ...