Radio Times

It's my favourite ever scene in the wonderful Channel 4 comedy series Peep Show, and it involves flatmates Mark and Jeremy's increasingly desperate boredom as they sit through a performance at the theatre:

Jeremy (yearning to escape): "When do we get to go out?"
Mark (equally restless): "As far as I can make out we get to go out for a bit in an hour, then we have to come back for two hours."
Jeremy: "You're kidding! I think I'll die."
Mark: "If this was on television, nobody would be watching."
Jeremy: "Oh God, why aren't we watching television?"

For me, that exchange perfectly encapsulates the crushing boredom of the theatre. Or "The Theatre" (theatrical types always sound to me as if they capitalise those hated words). Because why would anyone choose to pay a lot of money to be cramped and uncomfortable in the same room as hundreds of other people, watching performances that are always too big and too loud and, worst of all, you can't get out.

Why not stay at home and watch telly instead? You don't have to wear jewellery and uncomfortable shoes, and you don't have to eat ice creams as solid as perma-frost with tiny plastic spoons. (Though perhaps you do all of those things in your house as you watch Heartbeat, in which case, good for you.)

All of these imponderable questions trotted through my mind as I watched My Zinc Bed (Wednesday BBC2), an adaptation of a David Hare play first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre. Crikey, I marvelled, people actually paid to see this?

Reading the BBC2 publicity material, everyone seems terribly excited by My Zinc Bed, probably because it stars Hollywood A-lister Uma Thurman. But, poor love, she has a tough time in the role of a needy drug addict trapped in a poisonous marriage to a manipulative millionaire (Jonathan Pryce). So tough, someone should throw that woman a life jacket and a whistle - she's drowning.

My Zinc Bed, because it's a theatrical production, and everyone obviously holds its sacred text in awe and reverence, is allowed to get away with the kind of stuff that would be a no-no in a proper television drama. It's yawningly talky and boring (that's a given) because everyone has brittle conversations with everyone else. It quotes Joseph Conrad in its opening line, it is mannered and stilted and nothing actually happens.

Can you imagine anyone getting away with that lot in New Tricks or The Bill? These are shows that actually have to work to attract audiences, rather than, like My Zinc Bed, settling down on a taffeta-covered divan with its feet up, getting a pedicure because it's "The Theatre" and what do TV audiences know about it, anyway?

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times.

What an astonishingly stupid article. The BBC are to be congratulated for showing "My Zinc Bed", as well as "God on Trial", and "A Number", each of them excellent dramas - I am tempted to call them plays - which placed demands on their audience, and delivered truly compelling, intelligent television. It was wonderful to see long dialogue sequences on our screens again, uninterrupted by hyperactive camera movements or excessive cutting. Sadly "Alison Graham" only dismisses such things as "yawningly talky". But of course she does not mean what she is saying. This is the same "Alison Graham" who once wrote an article in the RT saying how she hated every single situation comedy, but now can't stop going on about how much she "loves" "Peep Show", "The Thick of It", "The Office", and whatever else she deems fashionable. (She also devoted numerous column inches to tell us how great the first series of "Nighty Night" was, until the second series came out, when for some reason she never mentioned it again.)

My only regret in all this is that the BBC didn't make more of a song and dance about the return of the serious single play to our screens. Perhaps next time they can group them all under a heading: "The Wednesday Play", perhaps.

Dear Alison,

I do not know if you personally reply here, or even read these comments...

I rarely watch television, and good for me. Even rarer is me having a copy of RT in my hands...

Please consider that your column should be concerned with TV programs only. There are other people whose jobs it is to be a theatre critic ( or music critic, food critic, car critic etc).

I am a member of a small Amateur Dramatics Society, we are a group of dedicated volunteers running a very successful community theatre of just over 100 seats; every year we propose up to 5 short contemporary plays ( by authors such as John Godber, Ivan Menchell, Alan Ayckbourn) and seats cost up to £6. We are fully booked most nights of each performance, as each ninety minutes long play is of high professional standard thanks to long rehearsals and attention to details on all sides. Our public, ( aged 10 to 100), enjoy themselves and tell us so, they do not require special attires to attend, nor do they feel hard-done by at the box office or at the interval.

Live theatre is entertainment but also interactive, it brings people together, and performances are never the same twice. You are always involved in the play you are watching, undistracted by chatter, phone or food, and it brings respect and appreciation for everybody's hard work.

This is why I rarely watch television, and good for me....

Alison I love reading your column and agree with a lot you write.However I found 'The Zinc Bed' an excellent drama.Uma Thurman was so moving in her addictive state as were both Jonathan Pryce and Paddy considine in their performances.Great sets,fine interesting story,and so well acted.I would like more one-off dramas like this.Mature and sophisticated..

I thought it was great also. I kind of noticed a couple of bad reviews before watching it, but since Uma was in it (and she choses great productions to be involved with) I figured I would at least see what it was like. Rather than finding it difficult to watch, I found it difficult, eventually impossible to go and get the snack I was going to have! I loved the scrutiny of AA and the whole philosophy so apparent today that "it's not my fault, I can't help it" etc. It was really getting down to our innner core ideas and how they shape us. We need love but we are scared of being hurt again. We need to believe we are worthy of respect and are equal to the person we love. And then there are other times when we think we are undefeatable, yet we are drawn to people who are struggling with life, because they reflect our hidden traumas and struggles, the person we believe we have left behind.

There was another great show on last night, late - called "Stacked" on Channel 4. This was a little more fluffy and user friendly. Exploration of modern times and family life.

I found My Zinc Bed compelling throughout. Has Alison Graham got some kind of attention deficit disorder, so she needs a succession of swooping images, and cuts and dissolves to different locations to hold her? My image of her is she must like computer games and the clever, information-poor cgi effects that swamp our screens these days.

Action doesn't just mean people hitting each other or rushing about (in space or time) or doing emergency rescues or operations. Has she lost the capacity for face-to-face interaction and so can't relate to it on screen? Action means people doing things to each other: and on the screen as well as in the theatre this can be done through talk. As, in my view, it was with great insight and skill in this drama, and in the TV production of it.

It's always interesting how different people have different reactions. I just hope she didn't put too many people off seeing this, or any repeat. Of course a TV Preview doesn't entail the obligation to praise everything or to attract viewers. But at least there is, surely, a duty to try to connect with what a drama is actually trying to do. I think she just indulged in a minor, blinkered rant. Oh dear! Am I doing the same? Perhaps she should engage me to write some Previews!

Why do people go to the theatre? because there you can acheive the connection with an audience and electricity that television can never even hope to rival. It's drama at it's purest form with all the barriers and restraints of tv and film removed. This is why for many actors, theatre is their first love and why a lot them revert back to it. I guarentee you would change your mind if you went to the theatre and saw a company who could put on quality performance.

Radio Times Code of Conduct

"must not contain unlawful or objectionable content nor involve disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour"

Alison congratulations on being both objectiobable and offensive

Alison

You really are missing out on so much if that's what you truly believe.

Oh Alison, wash thy mouth out with soap in ridiculing theatre! I agree with the previous writers in that you must have had a bad theatre experience at some time in your life. Theatre is wonderful. It can make you laugh or cry or just sit there in awe of what you are seeing before you. (I am talking the serious stuff here, not Andrew Lloyd Weber piffle.) I never cease to be transfixed in whatever scene I am watching. (Maybe it is because my Mum foresaw my acting ability at the age of 4 when I was treading the boards in the local theatre. I just adore the whole theatrical scenario.) The ONLY play which bored me to tears and did last 2 hours without a break was a recent performance of God of Carnage in London. Four top stars and it was so horrible. Give it a go again Alison and breathe fire on your frozen ice cream with your dragon comments, sit back and enjoy!

You are kidding, right? I normally love AG's stylish commentaries, even on the television tripe I never watch, such as soaps. But this is a real-deal, inferiority-complex grudge. What? ALL theatre? From Cyrano de Bergerac to the 45mns one-woman show about Robert Burns' women I and mine saw a few days ago? (Incidentally, as a regular theatre-goer, I'm hard-pressed to recall a play running for 2 hours without a break, unlike, for example, the cramped seats and darkened auditorium of Batman Returns. But, hey, that's popular culture, right? Pure snobbery to look down on that?). A great shame if anyone championing The Theatre among young people takes heed of any of this drivel. The Bill up against Black Watch? The histrionic, self-advertising improbabilities of soapland alongside Gargarin Way? Heavens. 15mns of stagey, knowing. overproduced dialogue from House just feels like 2 hours. Close thy Radio Times (cept the radio pages, of course), open thy List. I promise, for anybody who doesn't know, nothing to touch live theatre. You'll never watch an Andrew Davies in quite the same way again.

By showing 'My Zinc Bed' TV is showing that it is not dumbing down. On the evidence of Alison Graham's patronising article Radio Times certainly is.

It must have been quite a challenge for Alison Graham to write her TV column this week from way up there on her high horse. Normally very witty and perceptive, she badly missed the mark with her piece on theatre ("Curtain Down", 23-29 August issue).

My Zinc Bed may well have been utter rubbish, I don't know as I didn't watch it. However to generalise from this one show to proclaiming all theatre to be "crushingly boring," "cramped and uncomfortable," "always too big and too loud" and "yawningly talky and boring" (the latter a specific reference to My Zinc Bed, but described as "a given" apparently because it's theatre) is ridiculous.

Yes, theatre (no capital T from me Alison, and I work for a theatre in Edinburgh) can sometimes be expensive, and it probably does have more than its share of pretension and preening - however to stereotype the entire genre this way is as foolish as it would be to watch Big Brother and then announce that all TV is vapid, shallow and worthless. It's inverted snobbery and it does Ms Graham and the RT no credit at all.

To resort to cliches and snide jibes like "awe and reverence" or "taffeta-covered divan" is pretty cheap stuff - to add a complaint about the alleged hardness of the ice-cream is just childish. I don't know what the theatre world has done to Alison, but it seems to have hurt her in some way, and that's a shame, because it's intelligent and (usually) fun people like her who get the most out of onstage work. Moreover it's exactly people like that who are needed to break the stranglehold (genuine or just perceived) of the arts-mafia types she (and I) despise. Theatre should be, and is, for everyone.

To give an example, I am a 29 year old guy, I attend football matches religiously, I like TV and movies, I read, go to concerts, play the odd computer game and listen to a lot of music (rock, pop, dance, hip-hop, you name it). In other words I'm just a regular person like anyone else - certainly not a theatre snob. I do happen to go to the theatre a fair bit though, partly because of my job, and partly because it can be genuinely brilliant, moving and funny.

It can also be utter tosh at times, but that's the same chance you take when you go to a match, buy a game, get a concert ticket or indeed turn on the TV. Admittedly you can't switch over midway through a theatre performance, but in this era of short-attention span, instant-gratification culture, maybe a bit of patience isn't a bad thing once in a while.

One final thought - if theatre is so bad, why does the Radio Times feature one of its best exponents on the cover so often? I'm pretty sure David Tennant (recently as Hamlet of course, but a superb stage actor for many years before he became the Doctor) would take some exception to his work being labelled "crushingly boring". Why for that matter, in the immediately adjoining column, does Alison refer so gushingly to Alan Bennett's "sublime" work - he's quite into theatre himself you know.

I would suggest that Alison needs to give theatre more of a chance - indeed if she's ever in Edinburgh I'd be glad to provide her with a couple of tickets to one of our shows. She'll find the welcome warm, the seats comfortable, the entertainment engrossing (usually) and even the ice-cream nicely soft. If she's already made up her mind that theatre is not for her, then fair enough, but I think that's rather sad as she's missing out on a lot. At the very least though she might give it a proper go before exhibiting her prejudices for all to see.

Yours sincerely,

Michael

Oh my God, you're wrong

Clearly, they don't call it the Idiot Box for nothing.