page 14

Popeye on~the~box

Lord Reith's concept of Public Service Broadcasting has been with us now for forty years - and it does seem a day too much.

The peculiar off-spring of this frenetic Presbyterian public servant is a Piscean figure - two fishes trying to swim in different directions. "In that direction lives the Public Good and in that direction lives Entertainment. Choose whichever you please - they're both mad". Along the straight if narrow road to Public Good we find such programmes as Country Calendar, the News, Reg Chibnall and (God help us) Tuesday Trimming. These often unhappy grandchildren of the Laird set out to make those who watch them feel righteous - "see the news and be informed."

Along the primrose path of Entertainment we find here and there the odd flower amid a profusion of weeds annual, perennial and sempeternal.

Struggling to cut a tract between these two paths is that dozen of New Zealand's P.S.B's, Mr Des Monaghan of Gallery. With unflagging dedication and the giant heart of a trouper, Mr Monaghan leads his three performing bears (Joe the tame, Geoff the teddy and David the grisly where few would dare to set foot. Twice weekly the troupe flirts with enjoyable television while poised on a wire high above the notorious Torrent of Abuse.

If Mr Monaghan doesn't have an ulcer by now he ought to have. As a pioneer explorer of the darkest reaches of Reith's mind, he also deserves a medal.

Gallery has joined the two paths. The Public Good can be entertaining. Let the trumpets sound!.... But wait. Now, we are told, the paths must sever. We are going to have a new channel. On one channel, Public Service programmes will be heavily disguised as Entertainment (eg Tuesday Trimming with Raqual Welch) and on the other channel, the reverse will apply. "Choose whichever you please - they're both mad."

Can you remember the last time you saw a car in Coronation Street? For that matter, how often do you see a Pakistani or an Indian in the programme? Yet the main attraction of "the street" is its "realism".

Many of us tend to dismiss this highly rated programme as trite. Yet surely its continuing fascination for so many people is worthy of examination.

If we accept the easily demonstrable fact that the programme is not, perse, realistic, how do we then go about understanding its appeal? It seems to me that the "street" and its characters have created a new myth of essential working-class goodness; of the basic soundness of the British "system", of the way in which people can pull through a crisis. Take the central character, for example I suspect that most of us have known, in the unwelcome embraces of hirsuit, menopausal great-aunts, an Ena Sharpies or two. The camphor-and Pears soap smell of those ladies, the feel of the soft and expansive bosom, occupies a special region of our minds, along with the smell of an out-door wood fire and the taste of Christmas pudding. To us, as children, these great-aunts seemed tough but kindly, mysterious and ageless. Later, their many human failings became apparent and the mysterious image evapourated.

But Ena's mystery remains. She is, in fact, a childhood memory, an archetype, as real as a remembered birthday party, as true as a toy train. The possibility that she might have to squat occasionally on a lavatory is as bizarre as it is ridiculous.

Indeed most of the characters are archetypal rather than realistic. They represent a cunningly disquised ideal of goodness, brashness, sexual attractiveness, whatever. Watching Coronation Street, then, becomes a vaguely theraputic exercise: the worm can watch Jack Walker finally turn on Annie and feel proud; the old maid can be secretly thrilled when Elsie Tanner appears to be knocking out the men.

Coronation Street is likely to go on for years confirming the oneness of the hopes and aspirations of ordinary, working class white folks. Maybe it is trite to the intellectually superior. But no-one can deny that its superb acting and inventiveness of plot make it a programme of exceptional quality.

Ian Watkin