... Andy held show together --by James Towler Light Entertainment SHAME on you ITV! The New Year wasn't five minutes old yet there you were-- expecting us to toast it in Lucozade! Is nothing sacred? Surely we could have been spared the commercials just a little longer. Apart from anything else, this intrusion was little short of an insult to host Andy Stewart who, to his credit, did look as if ...

... Not enough angostura by Hazel Holt GIVEN such a framework it was a pity not to use it fully. A two-page analysis in the TV Times of the history, function and exclusivity of the yacht club led us to believe that the play on Sunday night, Harry Lifters (ATV, November 17, 10.30) would be a sharp and penetrating social comedy concerning the class-system and the mores of its members. What we got ...

... Two to woo all ages by Jill Weekes CHILDREN know what they like and like what they know. The two who joined me for Follow That Dog (Southern. Wednesday, November 13, 4.25 p.m.) and Rogue's Rock (Southern. November 13. 4.50 p.m.) normally watch the BBC and were reluctant to renounce Jackanory (430 p.m.) and the start of the well-trailed Chinese Puzzle (5.15 p.m.). They were not so particular ...

... Comedy Playhouse: The Importance of Being Hairy BBC-1, May 6 by John Lawrence JUDGING by this story of a university selection panel which chooses research students for the length of their hair and the number of left-wing cliches per second they can speak, Kingsley Amis appears to have little affection for either the staff or the students ot today s estaD- lishments of further education. The ...

... by Elizabeth Allen GRANADA'S Crown Court made it first to the television screen at its new peak viewing time 8.15 to 9.30 p.m with a story by Peter King called Who Killed Cock Robin? (ITV. Saturday July 19). It began well with shots of the dignified arm of the law directed to the scarlet-robed Judge, in this case William Mervyn; and counsel for the prosecution and defence. Jonathan Elsom and ...

... BUBBLE THEATRE BUBBLE'S show for the under-seven age group has been devised by the company, under Adrian Harris' direction, from a story by Mary Barten. Stan Bolovan and the Stupid Dragon has some catchy songs by Ian Milne and a quest story, all about a farmer who tries to magic up the children his wife wants, which is exciting without being frighten ing. This effect is greatly helped by Liz ...

... ON MAY 6 this year, day of the county council election results and a strike by provincial newspaper journalists, the Crucible Studio theatre in Sheffield sent some 600 people (a number of schools were co-operating) out into the city to record a day in its life. From the scores of tapes, cassettes and pieces of written material which flooded in, Rony Robinson has cobbled together One Day in ...

... RADA THERE'S nothing exclusively six-teenth-century about a conflict between conscience and convenience, and RADA's production of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons shows that the play's basic conflict is as dramatically viable with twentieth-centurv traooinas as with those of the sixteenth. The adaptation to present-day sur roundings provided some rather jarring moments (Take a car ...

... FUNERAL GAMES is another hornfic romp through Joe Orion's extraordinary \Vorld. This viciously funny attack on the priesthood was given far too sensible a performance in Central School's studio produc tion. McCorquodale and Pringle are unsaintly characters of the church that require outrageous perfor mances by the very way they are written, in fact it is unavoidable. Ivan Steward and Francis ...

... MISS JULIE by Strindberg was given sensitive treatment Dy central School Students in their studio production. The conflict between class and sex was crystal clear in the hands of Roger McKern and Janet Ellis with first one and then the other dominating the play. As Jean, Roger McKern was both servant and master as required. Ordinary, then ambitious, and finally frightened of his situation, ...

... Cranford BBC-l, December 3 by Patrick Campbell EXCEPT for a characteristic desire to pay respect to Elizabeth Gaskell (or, more likely, that her name is next on the perpetual rota of classic authors) I can see no good reason for a version of Cranford ai this time. I will admit Lord Houghton's dictum that Cranford is the finest piece of humouristic description that has been added to British ...

... Evening Class ATV, December 4 by David Fisher SHE was a librarian from Nottingham; he was a teacher from Brighton. It sounds like the start of a dirty story. In fact, it was the gentle sting in the tail of John Kershaw's play, Evening Class. It stung because both Sue Harvey and Matthew Jonson were black. Yet they were as English as you or I well, you anyway (I'm Austra lian). She worked in ...