Glued to the Box

Glued to the Box (TV Criticism from the Observer 1979-1982), is the third and final collection of the television criticism Clive James wrote for The Observer. It includes material from articles that run from 2 December 1979 to 28 March 1982. In the Introduction he writes that he had, " never thought of television criticism as a career. It is the sort of thing one goes into with a whole heart but not for ones whole life." The volume finishes with his "standing up and moving aside" for his successor, Julian Barnes. "No doubt he will slag one of my programmes first chance he gets, but by then I will be in the habit of damning all critics as fools." The London Review of Books wrote : " Along with its two predecessors, (Visions Before Midnight and The Crystal Bucket), it will stand as a once-only critical phenomenon: ten years worth of high intelligence and wit." Sheridan Morley called him " far and away the funniest writer in regular Fleet Street employment." The book is dedicated to Pat Kavanagh and Dan Kavanagh and carries an epigraph from Charles Péguy at its start.

Programmes Reviewed

• Ian Curteis's Suez - " an epic documentary drama about Sir Anthony Eden...Somewhere in the early 1950s, it is the end of the line for the British in the Middle East. The writing is on the wall, and it is in Arabic...Eden had no legal justification whatsoever for launching the Suez adventure. On top of that, he had misjudged Britain's real strength entirely..he handed the Soviet Union a moral advantage, which they were able to exploit when crushing the Hungarian rebellion...It was the moment when even Britain's rulers caught up with the truth about their country's reduced capacity to influence events by force."
• Testament of Youth - " four episodes have gone by. I have watched each of them twice and never ceased to marvel at the writing, directing and acting."
• Nancy - " portrayed Lady Astor as a sacred monster...She thought that if Ribbentrop were invited to Cliveden and allowed to win at musical chairs then Hitler would moderate his demands. Plainly, like many instinctively virtuous people, she was an innocent."
• Ski Sunday - " the women go slower than the men but not much. One feels protective when they crash, especially since the protectives they are wearing do not look all that protective. Luckily the British girls, in sharp contrast to their continental counterparts, move at a sedate pace."
• BBC Sports Personality of the Year - " the trophy for International Sportsman of the Year went to Bjorn Borg...Borg is always nice, knowing that he will never be resented for his wealth as long as he stays shy."
• Sportsnight the World Gymnastics Championships at Fort Worth - 'Remarkable how slim the Romanian girls are,' mused Ron Pickering and/or Alan Weeks. 'Quite slim indeed.' Poor , grim little darlings, they looked anorexic. "
• Henry IV, Part I (BBC2) - " proceeding staunchly between the lower levels of excitement and the upper stratum of tedium...Interiors tended towards straw-on-the-floor naturalism..The trouble with low-budget naturalism is that it never looks natural..The night scenes before the Battle of Shrewsbury looked particularly fine."
• Shakespeare in Perspective with George Melly - " Melly quoted the odd Shakespearean line, showing that he could tell a pentameter from a pint pot. Singers are nearly always good at bringing out the rhythm of blank verse."
• South Bank Show on the Royal Shakespeare Company - " Alan Howard's was the voice that thrilled...he has a knack for Shakespeare's rhythm - the rhythm that holds melody together...preparing one of Achilles's speeches in Troilus and Cressida, [he] carefully rejeted most of the advice and concentrated on picking out the driving impulse of the verse, which thereupon yielded up its meaning of its own accord - the exact effect Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote it that way in the first place."
• A Famous Journey with Kenneth Griffith - " Retracing the journey of The Magi, Kenneth landed in Iran. Immediately he was thrown out...Kenneth blended obtrusively into the scenery. He has a high visibility factor, mainly because he is incapable of either just standing there when he is standing there or just walking when he is walking."
• Henry IV, Part II - " Playing Hal, David Gwillim..had an ear for rhythm..'How ill white hairs become a fool and jester.' Falstaff ( a quietly excellent impersonation by Anthony Quayle), was crushed."
• World of Sport, with American truck racing - " The man who won leaned out of his cab to say, 'I just thank the good Lord that we were able to pull this thing off.' Another truck, in which the good Lord was evidently less interested, fell apart."
• The Tamarind Seed, The Go-Between, Cleopatra, Ben-Hur, Where Eagles Dare ("fighting their way back through several divisions of the German Army, our two heroes Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, had the advantage of being equipped with real ammunition, whereas the Germans, apparently, had made the mistake of issuing their men with blanks"), The Poseidon Adventure : - "Every day of the festive season the channels attempted to clobber each other with old movies...Cleopatra was spread over two days like a small golf tournament..Ben-Hur..has in fact a lot to offer the discerning viewer.."
• The Knowledge " a play by Jack Rosenthal about what taxi-drivers have to learn before they get their badge. What they have to learn is London...Some of the acting was as unsubtle as some of the writing but the thing worked."
• Christmas with Eric and Ernie - " Des O'Connor turned up to receive the benefit of his usual million pounds worth of free publicity. Getting goosed by Eric and Ernie is the best thing that ever happened to him and he is smart enough to be grateful."
• Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way - " Barbara Woodhouse trains dogs by breaking the spirit of the owner."
• Man Alive, debate on the Olympic Games - " Marina Voikhanskaya, who knows exactly what happens to dissident opinion in the Soviet Union, described the process of 'cleaning' Moscow in preparation for the games. The reason for moving the children out is that 'children are spontaneous people.'...Lord Exeter, 'representing the Olympic movement' had even stronger views but you could not say that he put them. He dumped them in your lap and left you to do what you could with them. 'I've spent my life in this movement,' he barked, as if anyone cared about that. 'We've always kept out of politics.' "
• Blake's Seven - " Servilan, the only reason for watching the otherwise worthless Blake's Seven.. Played by a statuesque knockout caleled Jacqueline Pearce...she is obliged to spend an unconscionable amount of time pursuing Blake's dreary Seven through fitfully shimmering time-warps and into the awkwardly whirling vortices of low-budget black holes."
• The Moonies (ATV) - " Mr Moon talks like the leading heavy from an episode of Batman made in about 1946. 'Many people will die. Those who go against our movement.' ".."Such groups have a strong appeal for people who are simultaneously self-obsessed and deficient in real personality..The term brainwashing should be reserved for cases in which there are brains to be washed."
• Liberace's Valentine Night Special - " like being forcibly fed with warm peppermint creams."
• Frank Sinatra - the First Forty Years - " The venue was Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. It was jammed with celebrities, many of them still alive."
• The Enigma , adapted by Malcolm Bradbury from a story by John Fowles - " was about a rich Tory MP who went missing...The MP's awful son had a marvellously intuitive and beautiful mistress, played by Barbara Kellerman. "
• Very Like a Whale, a play by John Osborne - " Alan Bates played Sir Jock Mellor, captain of industry. Sir Jock had a strange temperament for a captain of industry. He was just like a playwright...Gemma Jones was very good at being the bitchy Osborne woman who shouts, 'I haven't finished my drink!"
• 1980 Winter Olympics - " There was tragedy, of course. 'And that...is another tragedy for the British speed skaters.' While these sentiments were being uttered, a British male speed skater could be seen sliding along on his nose. In another tragedy, a British female speed skater forgot to change lanes and scythed down the only Chinese female speed skater in existence.. All this time the BBC commentators had been doing their best to stay calm about Robin Cousins. They rarely mentioned him more than a thousand times a night."
• Nationwide - there was a lady whose cat had recently survived a complete cycle in the washing machine. 'What sort of condition was he in?' asked Frank Bough. The lady answered without smiling: 'My husband said he looked like a drowned rat."
• Open University, production of Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles - " Costumes consisted of caftans and plastic masks, decor of practically nothing..It was the best Greek tragedy I have seen on television since Eileen Atkins played Electra. "
• Free to Choose , with Milton Friedman - " Friedman is an eloquent man with a simple idea ..Friedman's theory has the dubious merit of being unfalsifiable. It always fits. A country prospers if its government does not interfere. If a country prospers even when the government does interfere, it would have prospered even more if the government had not interfered...the Left has become unpopular...Nowadays the New Class tends to be on the Right. I would be surprised if this supposedly seismic realignment were anything more than yet another change of fashion, with the truth remaining hard to get at. All you can be sure of is that anyone who sounds as if he has all the answers hasn't. "
• The Tempest BBC Television Shakespeare - " Michael Hordern, as Prospero, was magical enough to transfigure his surroundings, the television screen and , eventually, you "
• Just for Today, documentary about Jimmy Greaves - " Booze stood indicted as a bad thing "
• Secret Orchards a William Trevor play - " adultery is a bad thing "
• A Gift from Nessus, by William McIlvanney and Bill Craig - " an excellent play..As acted and directed, it was genuinely tragic. "