Visions Before Midnight

Visions Before Midnight is a selection of the television criticism that Clive James wrote in his first four years as television critic for The Observer, 1972-1976. The selection begins with a piece on the 1972 Summer Olympics, and ends with a piece on the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. It was first published in 1977. The title derives from Sir Thomas Browne: Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

James had previously written one piece per month on television for The Listener - its editor , Karl Miller, had been an important influence on James and had allowed him to; ' write a column which eschewed solemnity so thoroughly that it courted the frivolous. Like Lichtenberg Karl Miller appreciated the kind of joke that unveils a problem: if your gags had a serious reason for being there, they stayed in.' David Astor brought James to The Observer and his career as a weekly television columnist began. He explains in the preface; 'Television was a natural part of my life. I loved watching it and I loved being on it. The second passion has since somewhat faded, but the first remains strong, and was very powerful at the time. I watched just about everything, including the junk. The screen teemed with unsummable activity. It was full of visions, legends, myths, fables. T.V was scarcely something you could feel superior to. It was too various. What I had to offer was negative capability, a capability for submission to the medium. I was the first to submit myself to Alastair Burnet and find him fascinating. No critic before me had ever regarded David Vine as a reason for switching the set on.'

In the preface James says that the idea of publishing a selection of his television criticism had been in his mind since speaking with Kenneth Tynan at a reception at the Garrick Club. Tynan had said he hoped James would publish some of his criticism but averred that, 'A television critic would have to know everything, and who knows everything?' James had been lost for an answer at the time but in the Preface replies,'It isn't necessary to know everything - just to remember that nobody else does either.'

Programmes reviewed:

• Coverage of the 1972 Summer Olympics - "the accompanying talk rarely reached adequacy"
• If Britain had Fallen (a 3 part documentary)
• Six Faces (with Kenneth More)
• The Incredible Robert Baldick (with Robert Hardy)
• Mrs Warren's Profession with Coral Brown - "showed that Coral Brown is as good at George Bernard Shaw as Lady Windermere's Fan proved she was good at Oscar Wilde."
• War and Peace - " script and direction working together as fatally as Laurel and Hardy trying to climb a wall - Morag Hood arouses an unquenchable desire to throw a tarpaulin over her and nail down the corners."
• Something to Say - discussion with Isaiah Berlin, Bryan Magee and Stuart Hampshire,
  The Commanders - episode dealing with Bomber Harris
  
• Cedric Messina's production of King Oedipus
• David Mercer's The Bankrupt starring Joss Ackland and Sheila Allen
• Miss World - "Just a pack of fair to middling, not unpleasing, impenetrably dopey broads."
• But Seriously, It's Sheila Hancock
• Alun Owen's The Web
• World in Action on The Angry Brigade
• Marlene Dietrich's special Dietrich
• Richard Nixon's address - "There can be no whitewash at the White House"
• Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads - "Sequels are rarely as strong as the originals, but 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads' is currently breaking the rule."
• Sportsnight - "Ludmilla Tourischeva's beautiful programme on the asymmetric bars has the mature inevitability we have so far missed in the work of the more spectacular Olga Korbut."
• Romantic versus Classic Art - with Kenneth Clark , "elegant, perspicuous sentences, television's premier talking head."
• It's a Knockout
• Panorama - special on Alec Douglas-Home
• One Pair of Eyes with Antonia Fraser
• Miss TVTimes 1973 - "each girl was turned loose in Madame Tussauds and asked to cuddle up to the effigy of the man she admired most", one girl chose Henry VIII - "because he, piped the lass, had all the qualities she'd like in a man."
• A Kind of Freedom with Richard Neville
• Divorce His, Divorce Hers with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
• Hadleigh - "the modern male dream of the cool aristo."
• Star Trek
• Coverage of the wedding of Anne, Princess Royal and Mark Phillips - "Asked how tall she thought Anne was, a little girl guessed 3 feet."
• Cudlipp and be Damned - TV portrait of Hugh Cudlipp - "Cudlipp was 'the greatest tabloid journalist of all time' - tantamount to calling him the greatest salesman of sticky sweets in the history of dentistry." "Rank wasn't important to Cudlipp - his chauffeur called him Hugh."
• Holiday 74 with Cliff Michelmore - "begins with half a dozen pairs of knockers, swaying, rolling or running at you through varying intensities of exotic sunlight."
• Cilla - "her guest Twiggy was delightful."
• Is Seeing Believing? with Uri Geller - "a master of mis-direction."
• The Lonely Man's Lover by Barry Collins with Jan Francis
• Play for Today , Trevor Griffiths' All Good Men "covered familiar ground in an unfamiliar manner", - starring Bill Fraser, Ronald Pickup, Frances de la Tour, Jack Shepherd - "the most convincing fictional radical to reach the screen in recent times."
• The Pallisers - " a bit of a dud."
• Tony Palmer's The World of Hugh Hefner - "I live the kind of life surrounded by beautiful things, female and material " - Hefner's use of language was extraordinary."
• Jonathan Miller's The Merchant of Venice - "Setting it in the 19th century was a big fault. With all that, though, the production had Mind. This is the quality one is grateful for to Miller...Laurence Olivier modelled his appearance on Scrooge McDuck."
• Horizon The Future Goes Boom with Herman Kahn - "Kahn's Law , anything that is happening now will still be happening fivetenfifteentwennytwenny-fiveyearsfromnow only more so, unless something stops it."
• Chidren in Crossfire - Northern Ireland set documentary
• Napoleon and Love - " A turkey of fabulous dimensions" starring Ian Holm and Billie Whitelaw, " Billie Whitelaw plays Josephine with the effortless desperation of Arthur Rubinstein playing Chopsticks - she has never been so bad in her life."
• Eurovision Song Contest from Brighton presented by Katie Boyle - "32 countries and 500 million viewers in a search for Europe's songatheyear, Olivia Newton John sang Long Live Love, ABBA sang Waterloo , built on a T.Rex riff, and a Supremes phrase, delivered in a Pikkety Witch style..The girl with the blue knickerbockers (Agnetha Fältskog), the silver boots and the clinically interesting lordosis looked like being the darling of the contest."
• Success Story - about Enid Blyton, 600 books that have sold 85 million copies - "Nobody can predict what will interest kids."
• See You Sunday - about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - "If the Organisation is rich, life will be rich," the holy person explained."
• Twelfth Night - " Set in Regency England, the whole production would have been thoroughly incoherent if Shakespeare and Janet Suzman, hand in hand, had not come running to the rescue."
• Success Story - about Tretchikoff - " the kitsch merchant."
• The Roots of Yoga
• Love from A to Z - with Liza Minnelli and Charles Aznavour - " A river of drivel. Liza Minnelli began her career with a preposterous amount of talent, the shreds of which she still retains, but like her mother she doesn't know how to do anything small."
• Richard Nixon's exit - "Richard Nixon...never did a smoother gig than his last as President. 'I have always preferred to carry through to the finish, whatever the personal agony involved.' He meant that he had always preferred to cling on to power, whatever the agony involved for other people - but at least the lie was told in ringing tones."
• The Osmonds - "The star, of course, is Donny Osmond. He is a cow-eyed, fine boned lad of the type you see languishing angelically in a Botticelli tondo."
• Justice - with Margaret Lockwood
• Worldwide - China Today - "Frank Gillard called Tibet 'an autonomous part of China' without mentioning that China invaded it first."
• Father Brown - with Kenneth More
• Porridge - "A rock-solid script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Good comic writing depends on a regular supply or real-life speech patterns."
• Face your Image with Lord Longford - "One of the most conceited men alive..Richard Ingrams contended his great love in life was publicity."
• Notorious Woman - drama about the life of George Sand - "In the final episode Chopin croaked. It was a merciful release for all of us. I enjoyed this series hugely, for all the wrong reasons."
• David Copperfield - "Arthur Lowe's Micawber is better than anything."
• Lifestyle featuring Mary Quant and Alexander Plunket Greene - " galloping cretinism."
• A Passion for Churches with John Betjeman - "Not quite the heady scope of Betjeman's masterpiece Metro-land, but still very good."
• Trevor Nunn's Antony and Cleopatra - " a trail-blazing production."
• Churchill's People - "Somebody on the top floor has gone berserk - the writing reveals nothing about the past of the English people, but much about the present state of the English language; 'While we wait here waiting for the Assembly to assemble..' one poor sod found himself saying."
• World in Action - profile of Margaret Thatcher - "The camera loves the face and the face is learning to love the camera. On camera she comes over as a deep thinker."
• Ingmar Bergman's Six Scenes fom a Marriage - "the higher trash."