Extricating Dick

Even the strait-laced BBC has its wild & woolly moments. The woolliest: 6:45 every week night, when British youngsters gasp at the well-planned perils of Dick Barton, Special Agent, hero of BBC's only nonstop thriller.* Every night, just as death's door opens, time's up. "What will Dick do? Listen in tomorrow night. . . ."

It was all many an adult Briton could bear--and it was too much for one W. Wright-Newsome. He took.his troubles, as Britons will, to the Times of London. Wrote he: "The BBC seems bent on turning the children into a new kind of drug addict. . . . The poor children grow more concerned from day to day about what Dick Barton . . . may do next than about their futures or the future of England. My neighbors confirm that when they turn [him] off . . . their children regard them as . . . tyrannic giants."

That brought a defense for Dick & friends from one Sheelagh Hardie: "Surely Dick, having emerged unscathed from fire and water, from the perilous lift-shaft and the homicidal ape, need fear little from this new assault. Surely, too, our children, having wrestled for one and a half hours with compound fractions or Latin verbs on top of a long day's schooling, are entitled to their 15 minutes' reward. Who grudges the bishop his detective novel or the businessman his nightly half-hour on the Times crossword? . . . Heaven postpone the day when our priggish offspring forsake such unsophisticated thrills for the sober contemplation of their own importance in the future of planned economy."

But ever-cautious BBC did not want to make an issue of it. Last week, in a move to appease parents and children alike, it offered a compromise: 1) Dick's adventures would continue to be broadcast nightly; 2) on Saturday mornings a brief resume of Dick's week would be aired for youngsters barred from listening on school nights. To many a parent it seemed that Dick had won again.

* U.S. networks offer 52 such serials, 30 hours a week.

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